"Time," he said, "forges an armour on us all.... I’ll wait until mine is well riveted before I return. You’re quite right, Steve.... You and I can’t go on this way. There would come a time when the intense strain would break us both—break down our resolution and our sense of honour—and we’d go away together—or make each other wretched here.... Because there’s no real happiness for you and me without honour, Steve. Some people can do without it. We can’t. "We might come to think we could. We might take the chance. We might repeat the stale old phrase and try to ’count the world well lost.’ But there would be no happiness for you and me, Steve. For, to people of our race, happiness is composite. Honesty is part of it; loyalty to ideals is another; the world’s respect, the approval of our own hearts, the recognition of our responsibility to the civilization that depends on such as we—all these are part of the only kind of happiness that you and I can understand and experience.... So we must give it up.... And the best way is the way I offer.... Let me go out of your life for a while.... Live your own life as you care to live it.... Time must do whatever else is to be done." The girl lifted her dishevelled head and looked at him. "Are you going to-night?" "Yes." "You are not coming back?" "No, dear." She dropped her head again. There was a train at four that afternoon. He took a gay and casual leave of Helen and Grayson, where he found them reading together in the library. "Will you be back to-morrow?" inquired the latter. "I’m not sure. I may be detained for some time," said Cleland carelessly. And went upstairs. Stephanie, frightfully pale, came to her door. Her hair was dressed and she was gowned for the afternoon. She tried to speak but no sound came from her colourless lips; and she laid her hands on his shoulders in silence. Their lips scarcely touched before they parted; but their eyes clung desperately. "Good-bye, dear." "Good-bye," she whispered. "You know I love you. You know I shall never love another woman?" "Try to—forget me, Jim." "I can’t." "I can’t forget you, either.... I’m sorry, dear. I wish you had me.... I’d give you anything, Jim—anything. Don’t you know it?" "Yes." She laid her head on his breast, rested a moment, then lifted it, not looking at him, and turned slowly back into her room. It was dark when he arrived in New York. The flaring streets of the city seemed horrible to him. *CHAPTER XXXIII* Washington Square seemed to him a little cooler than the streets to the northward; the white arch, the trees, the splash of water made a difference. But beyond, southward, narrow streets and lanes were heavy with the close, hot odours of the slums—a sickening smell of over-ripe fruit piled on push-carts, the reek of raw fish, of sour malt from saloons—a subtler taint of opium from blind alleys where Chinese signs hung from rusting iron balconies.