"Does he--" began Melville and repented of the temerity of his question. "Yes?" she said. "Does he--ask to be released?" "No.... He wants to come back to me." "And you----" "He doesn't come." "But do you--do you want him back?" "How can I say, Mr. Melville? He does not say certainly even that he wants to come back." My cousin Melville looked perplexed. He lived on the superficies of emotion, and these complexities in matters he had always assumed were simple, put him out. "There are times," she said, "when it seems to me that my love for him is altogether dead.... Think of the disillusionment--the shock--the discovery of such weakness." My cousin lifted his eyebrows and shook his head in agreement. "His feet--to find his feet were of clay!" There came a pause. "It seems as if I have never loved him. And then--and then I think of all the things that still might be." Her voice made him look up, and he saw that her mouth was set hard and tears were running down her cheeks. It occurred to my cousin, he says, that he would touch her hand in a sympathetic manner, and then it occurred to him that he wouldn't. Her words rang in his thoughts for a space, and then he said somewhat tardily, "He may still be all those things." "I suppose he may," she said slowly and without colour. The weeping moment had passed. "What is she?" she changed abruptly. "What is this being, who has come between him and all the realities of life? What is there about her--? And why should I have to compete with her, because he--because he doesn't know his own mind?" "For a man," said Melville, "to know his own mind is--to have exhausted one of the chief interests in life. After that--! A cultivated extinct volcano--if ever it was a volcano." He reflected egotistically for a space. Then with a secret start he came back to consider her. "What is there," she said, with that deliberate attempt at clearness which was one of her antipathetic qualities for Melville--"what is there that she has, that she offers, that _I_----?" Melville winced at this deliberate proposal of appalling comparisons. All the catlike quality in his soul came to his aid. He began to edge away, and walk obliquely and generally to shirk the issue. "My dear Miss Glendower," he said, and tried to make that seem an adequate reply. "What _is_ the difference?" she insisted. "There are impalpable things," waived Melville. "They are above reason and beyond describing." "But you," she urged, "you take an attitude, you must have an impression. Why don't you-- Don't you see, Mr. Melville, this is very"--her voice caught for a moment--"very vital for me. It isn't kind of you, if you have impressions-- I'm sorry, Mr. Melville, if I seem to be trying to get too much from you. I--I want to know." It came into Melville's head for a moment that this girl had something in her, perhaps, that was just a little beyond his former judgments. "I must admit, I have a sort of impression," he said.