Her gaze grew grave. “Try to forget you?” He flushed to the forehead. “I meant, try to give Owen more time; to give him a chance. He’s madly in love with you; all the good that’s in him is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And she thought--she believed----” “She thought I could make him happy. Would she think so now?” “Now...? I don’t say now. But later? Time modifies ... rubs out ... more quickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I’m going too--WE’RE going--” he stumbled on the plural--“in a very few weeks: going for a long time, probably. What you’re thinking of now may never happen. We may not all be here together again for years.” She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes bent on them. “For me,” she said, “you’ll always be here.” “Don’t say that--oh, don’t! Things change ... people change...You’ll see!” “You don’t understand. I don’t want anything to change. I don’t want to forget--to rub out. At first I imagined I did; but that was a foolish mistake. As soon as I saw you again I knew it... It’s not being here with you that I’m afraid of--in the sense you think. It’s being here, or anywhere, with Owen.” She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him. “I want to keep you all to myself.” The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of his folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. “Poor child--you poor child!” he heard himself vainly repeating. Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus brought him to his feet. “Whatever happens, I intend to go--to go for good,” he exclaimed. “I want you to understand that. Oh, don’t be afraid--I’ll find a reason. But it’s perfectly clear that I must go.” She uttered a protesting cry. “Go away? You? Don’t you see that that would tell everything--drag everybody into the horror?” He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer note. “What good would your going do? Do you suppose it would change anything for me?” She looked at him with a musing wistfulness. “I wonder what your feeling for me was? It seems queer that I’ve never really known--I suppose we DON’T know much about that kind of feeling. Is it like taking a drink when you’re thirsty?... I used to feel as if all of me was in the palm of your hand...”