“Any _feeling_!” exclaimed Archibald. “Why—how can we help it!” “Let us act as if we had never understood one another. I will go back to the city with you, and Aunt Perkins and I will find some other place at once.” “Go back with me—and expect me to show no feeling! Elvira, this is preposterous!” “Then I will go back alone.” She compressed her lips, just as he had observed her father do. “I beg pardon, Elvira, do you mean—can you mean that I can never—I can never hope!” She nodded her pretty flower-like head gravely. “Come in to tea, won’t you?” she said, coolly. “I want father to hear you talk about Art.” He turned on his heel. At last he, too, was angry. “Thanks, awfully,” he said. “But if I go back to the hotel now, I shall just have time to pack my valise and catch the evening train.” He walked rapidly away, leaving her standing upon the white-pillared portico, looking with pure, sweet, upturned face, like a saint who has for all time renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil. Had he looked back, Mr. Jerome Archibald’s tender heart would have been touched by her attitude; he would have returned, and, against her will, clasped her in his arms and covered her pale lips with warm kisses. It might have melted her high “standard” a little. But he let a night intervene without seeing her, and the entering wedge of her high sense of duty did its work before morning. He determined to remain another day and make a further trial. When he called the next day she was obdurate. “Love cannot be built upon deceit and untruth,” she said, sententiously. “I was not frank, you were not. It is better that we should part. I could never hold up my head—I could never face the world. I know what they would call me. They would call me an _adventuress!_ and they would hate me for being successful. Yes—your mother, your sisters—everyone.” “But you were perfectly innocent about it, Elvira.” There was a little pause. “I, too, was innocent. I meant no more than to have you near me, where I could learn to know you—love you—and now, really, it seems as if you had built up a mountain of ice between us, don’t you know.” She merely shook her head.