"Go?" At the small startled echo he raised his head. "What else?" he asked. "Did you think that I would stay?" "But I do not want you to go." Her lips were white, but she spoke very clearly. Stephen Fane never moved but his eyes, dark and wondering, rested on her like a caress. "Oh, my little Loveliness, what dream is this?" "You must not go away again, you must not." "I am baser than I thought," he said, very low. "I have made you pity me, I who have forfeited your lovely pity this long time. It cannot even touch me now. I have sat here like a dark Othello telling tales to a small white Desdemona, and you, God help me, have thought me tragic and abused. You shall not think that. In a few minutes I will be gone--I will not have you waste a dream on me. Listen--there is nothing vile that I have not done--nothing, do you hear? Not clean sin, like murder--I have cheated at cards, and played with loaded dice, and stolen the rings off the fingers of an Argentine Jewess who--" His voice twisted and broke before the lovely mercy in the frightened eyes that still met his so bravely. "But why, Stephen?" "So that I could buy my dreams. So that I could purchase peace with little dabs of brown in a pipe-bowl, little puffs of white in the palm of my hand, little drops of liquid on a ball of cotton. So that I could drug myself with dirt--and forget the dirt and remember England." He rose to his feet with that swift grace of his, and Daphne rose too, slowly. "I am going now; will you walk to the gate with me?" He matched his long step to hers, watching the troubled wonder on her small white face intently. "How old are you, my Dryad?" "I am seventeen." "Seventeen! Oh, God be good to us, I had forgotten that one could be seventeen. What's that?" He paused, suddenly alert, listening to a distant whistle, sweet on the summer air. "Oh, that--that is Robin." "Ah--" His smile flashed, tender and ironic. "And who is Robin?" "He is--just Robin. He is down from Cambridge for a week, and I told him that he might walk home with me." "Then I must be off quickly. Is he coming to this gate?" "No, to the south one." "Listen to me, my Dryad--are you listening?" For her face was turned away. "Yes," said Daphne. "You are going to forget me--to forget this afternoon--to forget everything but Robin whistling through the summer twilight." "No," said Daphne. "Yes; because you have a very poor memory about unhappy things! You told me so. But just for a minute after I have gone, you will remember that now all is very well with me, because I have found the deep meadows--and honey still for tea--and you. You are to remember that for just one minute--will you? And now good-by--"