"I never thought about it. I knew that your society was very delightful to me, but I never for a moment imagined that such a friendship as ours could result in unhappiness to either of us. And why should our friendship have any such result? Why should I not continue to be interested in your career? why should not you come to see me whenever you please? Is friendship impossible between a man and woman, even when both have bidden adieu to youth? Promise me that you will never again say the desperate kind of things you have been saying to-day; and I will promise to take pleasure in your society to my dying day. Why should we not be like Cowper and Mrs. Unwin? You are not mad, and I am not evangelical, but I think that is rather an advantage. Promise, Mr. Crawford, and let us be friends for ever and ever." She held out her hand, and the painter took it tenderly in both his own. Could he have refused to take that hand, even if it had held the sentence of his death? "I cannot make such a promise," he said gravely; "I love you too dearly to be your friend. There is not an hour I have spent in your society during the last two years in which I have not been on the brink of telling you what I have told you to-day." "Oh, but that is positively dreadful," cried the widow archly; "friendship must be quite impossible if one's friends are always to be on the brink of saying desperate things." "Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Champernowne; my future life depends upon the answer you give me to-day. Against my own reason, against my own will, I have yielded myself up heart and soul to the fascination you exercise over me. I had not been in your house half-a-dozen times before I knew that if it was not my road to paradise, it was my road to perdition--and yet I came. I knew that you had money, high family, fashion; and that in your narrow world of the West-end I should be laughed at for my presumption, if it was known that I hoped to win you for my wife: and yet I came. I was quite prepared for what has happened to-day. I never really hoped. I never in sober sadness believed that you would answer me otherwise than you have answered me. I only let myself drift. You asked me to come to you, and I came; and I should have gone on and on, crawling to your feet like a lap-dog for ever and ever, if the impulse of the moment had not been too strong for me to-day." "Our friendship was very dear to me," answered Mrs. Champernowne; "I am sorry that it must end."