She drew back without answering. Her movement caught his attention. The change in her manner, the white night, made him bold. "I've often wondered," he said, "why you didn't remember me that day in Princeton, or that night. It hadn't been long. Don't you see it was an acknowledgment that I wasn't the old George Morton even then?" "Oh, no," she answered with a little laugh, "because I remembered you perfectly well." "Remembered me!" he cried. "And you danced with me, and said you didn't remember, and let me take you aside, and----" He moved swiftly nearer until his face was close to hers, until he stared into her eyes that he could barely see. "Why did you do that?" She didn't answer. "Why do you tell me now?" he urged with an increasing excitement. Such a confession from her had the quality of a caress! He felt himself reaching up to touch the summit. "Why? You've got to answer me." She arose with easy grace and stood looking down at him. "Because," she said, "I want you to stop being ridiculous and troublesome; and, really, the whole thing seems so unimportant now that I am going to be married." He cried out. He sprang to his feet. He caught her hands, and crushed them as if he would make them a part of his own flesh so that she could never escape to accomplish that unbearable act. "Sylvia! Sylvia!" She fought, gasping: "You hurt! I tell you you hurt! Let me go you--you----Let me go----" VIII George stared at Sylvia as if she had been a child expressing some unreasonable and incredible intention. "What are you talking about? How can I let you go?" Even in that light he became aware of the distortion of her face, of an unexpected moisture in her eyes; and he realized quite distinctly where he was, what had been said, just how completely her announcement for the moment had swept his mind clean of the restraints with which he had so painstakingly crowded it. Now he appreciated the power of his grasp, but he watched a little longer the struggles of her graceful body; for, after all, he had been right. How could he let her go to some man whose arms would furnish an inviolable sanctuary? He shook his head. No such thing existed. Hadn't he, indeed, foreseen exactly this situation, and hadn't he told himself it couldn't close the approach to his pursuit? But he had never reconnoitred that road. Now he must find it no matter how forbidding the places it might thread. So he released her. She raised her hands to her face. "You hurt!" she whispered. "Oh, how you hurt!" "Please tell me who it is." She turned, and, her hands still raised, started across the terrace. He followed. "Tell me!" She went on without answering. He watched her go, suppressing his angry instinct to grasp her again that he might force the name from her. He shrugged his shoulders. Since she had probably timed her attack on him with a general announcement, he would know soon enough. He could fancy those in the house already buzzing excitedly.