"Can we be friends again? Can you really forgive me, Strelsa?" "Why--yes, I could do that.... But, Langly, what have you and I in common as a basis for friendship? What have we ever had in common? Except when we encounter each other by hazard, why should we ever meet at all?" "You have not pardoned me, Strelsa," he said patiently. "Does that really make any difference to you? It doesn't to me. It is only because I never think of you that it would be an effort to forgive you. I'll make that effort if you wish, but really, Langly, I never think about you at all." "If that is true, let me be with you sometimes, Strelsa," he said in a low voice. "Why?" "Because I am wretchedly unhappy. And I care for you--more than you realise." She said seriously: "You have no right to speak that way to me, Langly." "Could you ever again give me the right to say I love you?" A quick flush of displeasure touched her cheeks; he saw it in the dusk of the garden, and mistook it utterly: "Strelsa--listen to me, dear! I have not slept since our quarrel. I must have been stark mad to say and do what I did.... Don't leave me! Don't go! I beg you to listen a moment----" She had started to move away from him and his first forward step broke a blossom from its stalk where it hung white in the dusk. "I ask you to go," she said under her breath. "There are people here--on the veranda----" Every sense within him told him to go, pretending resignation. That was his policy. He had come here for martyrdom, cuirassed in patience. Every atom of common sense warned him to go. But also every physical sense in him was now fully aroused--the silvery star-dusk, the scent of lilies, a slender woman within arm's reach--this woman who had once been so nearly his--who was still rightfully his!--these circumstances were arousing him once more to a temerity which his better senses warned him to subdue. Yet if he could only get nearer to her--if he could once get her into his arms--overwhelm her with the storm of passion rising so swiftly within him, almost choking him--so that his voice and limbs already trembled in its furious surge---- "Strelsa--I love you! For God's sake show me some mercy!" he stammered. "I come to you half crazed by the solitude to which your anger has consigned me. I cannot endure it--I need you--I want you--I ask for your compassion----" "Hush!" she pleaded, hastily retreating before him through the snowy banks of rockets--"I have asked you not to speak to me that way! I ask you to go--to go now!--because----" "Will you listen to me! Will you wait a moment! I am only trying to tell you that I love you, dear----" He almost caught her, but she sprang aside, frightened, still retreating before him. "I cannot go until you listen to me!--" he said thickly, trampling through the flowers to intercept her. "You've got to listen!--do you hear?" She had almost reached the terrace; the shadowy veranda opened widely beyond.