“Wait!” she said, not unkindly; and then softening, “Oh, how could you, when you knew that I trusted you; that has been the cruelest part of it!” “It was so easy,” he said. “But we look at it from such hopelessly different points of view.” “You are never to speak to me of this again; you are to forget what has passed to-day, and I shall try, too! You must promise me!” But he did not answer her directly. “So you are going to impose silence on me; isn't that a little hard? Not,” he added bitterly, “that I find myself with any inclination to anything else!” “It is necessary if we are to meet in the future,” she said quietly. “But isn't it an unnecessary condition?” he persisted. Her anger toward him seemed to have passed, and his courage was reviving. He threw aside his baffling manner and said frankly: “I'm more sorry than I can say, Mrs. Landray; and you shall not find me unworthy a second time.” CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE BENSON carried with him continually now a sense of hurt; and out of this came a certain subtle change in the very fibre of his love itself. He lost something of the spirit of worship, he seemed to be struggling for dominance. The reserve of his former attitude toward Virginia was lost. Once he had hoped to win her love, now he felt that he must compel it. He always came back to the one rankling conviction that she had been unjust; that she had allowed him to make sacrifices and to do for her in numberless ways she should not have permitted, unless she were willing to accept, not his love necessarily, but the full consequences of their intimacy, since it was perfectly incredible to him that any man could know her as he had known her, and not come to love her; he came to blame her that she had not understood. It was not unnatural perhaps that the after effect upon Virginia of Benson's declaration was less pronounced than upon himself. Her active anger was of brief duration only, and she soon forgave him his unlucky utterances in remembering his real kindness. She would have liked him to know this; but she was sensible it would be unsafe to show it, and after all, a marked but kindly reserve was only a reasonable precaution. She was sorry for him, and his restrained manner in her presence only tended to deepen her feeling of pity; yet she considered him both a foolish and presumptuous young man.