“You cannot love me,” he said slowly. “I cannot love you--and I know we cannot be friends. You are not that kind of man. It would tear your heart to pieces. Better one wrench at once and be done with it. And I am not the kind of woman to accept friendship that I knew was only a mask for love.” “You cannot love me?” he asked again monotonously, like a man repeating some set formula. “I cannot love you. I have played with my life in my own way, and as I have played so I will pay. Now, good-by, I know you too well and trust you too well to fear that you will trouble me at all. You will go away, I suppose?” “Yes,” said Jacynth moodily, “I will go away.” “Thank you, and good-by.” She moved away swiftly, and he stood there staring after her until she disappeared inside the hotel. Jacynth walked moodily back into the garden and stared sullenly at the bright sky. If the autumn day, so warm that it might have been midsummer, had suddenly changed to winter, it could not have looked colder or more dismal to his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. “So that’s all over,” he said to himself bitterly; “you have played your stake and you have lost, and now you must remember that it is your duty to play the man and not the fool.” Thrusting his hands into his pockets he began to walk slowly down the garden path, feeling very dull and dizzy, like a man who has had a heavy fall. He was thinking, or trying to think, of things which interested him so deeply once, and which now seemed so strangely uninteresting, when his meditations were interrupted. He found himself confronted by Castleton, who was eying him sympathetically. “Old man,” said Castleton, “you saved my life once, and though it wasn’t much worth saving, I’m devilish grateful to you all the same. So I’d like to do you a good turn now if I can.” “You can’t do me any good,” Jacynth answered, “there’s nothing the matter with me. Don’t talk rot, there’s a good fellow.” “There’s a great deal the matter with you, and I can do you good,” Castleton answered. “I can tell you all about that woman.” CHAPTER III. BY FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE. HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY. But this case is so plain ... that nothing can obscure it, but to use too many words about it.--JEREMY TAYLOR. Lord Castleton, doubtless, did not literally believe that he could tell his friend “all about” that woman. But he probably was possessed with the conviction that when he should have said what he had to say, there would remain little more worth telling. We smile with a kind of fatigued contempt at the venerable classical joke of the fool who, wishing to sell his house, carried about a brick from it as a specimen. We know better how to judge of houses. But we are willing--sometimes--to pick off a very small fragment of human life, and to exclaim knowingly, “Look here, _I’ll_ tell you what it is made of!” Lord Castleton’s well-meant offer was not received with gratitude.