"But you can talk out to me as much as you like. I shan't agree with you; but my faith, such as it is, is not new-born like Sally's. I wish it were half as strong." Only under cover of the dark would May have dared to say as much. "No, I can't even talk to you; the friendship is dead too. That was the ghost I saw this afternoon; it would have been a short-lived joy, any way, for I hear you are going to leave Rudham." "You are talking in riddles now!" cried May. "What should kill our friendship? and where am I going to?" "To Fairfield; so rumour says." May stopped short in her walk, and Paul heard her breath coming unevenly. When she spoke again her voice was low, but angry. "You outstrip the limits of friendship in daring to tell me what the gossips here say of me." "I had no intention of telling you. I suppose it slipped out because I hate to believe it true." "You need not believe it; I am not going to marry Sir Cecil Bland," said May, coldly. "What has it to do with you, may I ask?" "Thank Heaven!" muttered Paul, under his breath. "What have you against him?" "Nothing. Except that I suppose he loves you, and I love you too, and, although I know better than you can tell me, that my love is perfectly hopeless, I can bear it if I may let you live in my heart a little while, as the one woman in all the world to me, the only woman I have ever loved or ever wished to marry. That must not have been if you were pledged to marry some one else." "Oh, stop!" said May, laying an entreating hand upon his arm; "I feel as if I had been so cruel, I would not rest until I had you for a friend, but I never dreamed of this." "Nor I, until to-day," said Paul. "But when I heard that some one else was likely to marry you I knew." "Put me back into the old niche. Can't we forget about to-night?" Paul laughed a little harshly. "Forget!" he echoed drearily. "How little women know the way a man can love? With you I shall only rank as one of the many moths that have singed their wings by flying too closely about you." "No, no! I shall think of you always as my one man-friend, to whom I could say anything that was in my head. I shall miss him dreadfully." "And under no circumstances can you think of me in a different light?" "I don't know, but I think not," May said simply. "You may think it odd, or call me heartless, but I have not yet met the man I wish to marry. There! you see I trust you to the last. Good-bye, my friend." Paul bent over the hand that was put into his own and kissed it, and went home feeling that the chill of the night had closed about his heart. CHAPTER X. RIVAL SUITORS. "Where have you been, May? I have been frightened to death about you."