"You must go now, please," she said, in rather a strained voice, not looking towards him; and by some strange and subtle process of association she fell into words which she had used within the hour to another: "I don't wish to talk with you any more." The man's handsome face flushed brightly. He said in a throbbing voice: "I can't let you dismiss me this way. I can't endure it. Have I offended so--" "I can't talk with you any more now. I must ask--" "But you won't be so cruel! If I've offended, won't you make some allowance for my temptation? Am I a snow-man, to come so near and be unmoved? Am I to be a monk, because I live under sentence in a monastery? You ..." To do him justice, he did not look in the least like either of these things. However, Carlisle missed his look. Standing with lowered eyes, she said again, colorlessly: "Please leave me now--I beg you--" "But I can't leave you this way!" said Canning. "It's impossible! You misjudge me so--" "Then I must leave you," said Carlisle; and started to go past him. But Canning blocked her way, his face, troubled with deep concern, more handsome and winning than she had ever seen it. Only she still did not see it. He thought, with a whirling mind, that this was carrying the thing rather too far; but he saw with chagrin and a curious inner tumult the entire uselessness of more argument to-night. "I am heartbroken," he said, a little stiffly, "that I've brought you somehow to think so hardly of me. Your thought does a great wrong to the--respect and deep devotion I feel and shall feel for you." He wobbled the least bit over these words, as if himself conscious of a certain inadequacy, but went on with his usual masculine decisiveness: "Now it must of course be as you wish. But to-morrow I shall make you understand me better." He picked up hat, coat, and stick, defeated, yet not spoiled of his air. But as he turned to go, and looked at her for his formal bow, he was all at once aware that she wore a wholly new dignity in his sight, a subtly enhanced desirability. Unexpectedly her marble loveliness shot him through and through, and he said in a low throbbing voice: "You darling--darling! How can I bear to part from you like this? Forgive me _now_, Carlisle ..." But Carlisle's only response was to move away toward the hall. A moment later the front door shut, rather hard. Carlisle's second impassioned parting within an hour was over. She switched off the tall newel-post lamp, and went upstairs in the dark. * * * * * She was a long time in going to sleep. Not since she had the fever, as a little girl, was the great god of forgetfulness so elusive to her wooing. Not since the night at the Beach, and never in her life before that night, had the merry imps of thought so strung her brain upon a thumbscrew. Now came Self-Communion, rarest of her comrades, and perched upon her pillow.