"Now let us talk about the _fête_, Norman," she said. "You are the only one I care to talk with about my neighbors." So for half an hour they discussed the _fête_, the dresses, the music, the different flirtations--Philippa in her usual bright, laughing, half-sarcastic fashion, with the keen sense of humor that was peculiar to her. Lord Arleigh could not see that there was any effort in her conversation; he could not see the least shadow on her brightness; and at heart he was thankful. When he was going away, she asked him about riding on the morrow just as usual. He could not see the slightest difference in her manner. That unpleasant little conversation on the lake might never have taken place for all the remembrance of it that seemed to trouble her. Then, when he rose to take his leave, she held out her hand with a bright, amused expression. "Good-night, _Petruchio_," she said. "I am pleased at the name I have found for you." "I am not so sure that it is appropriate," he rejoined. "I think on the whole I would rather love a _Juliet_ than tame a shrew." "It may be in the book of fate that you will do both," she observed; and they parted, laughing at the idea. To the last the light shone in her eyes, and the scarlet lips were wreathed in smiles; but, when the door had closed behind him and she was alone, the haggard, terrible change that fell over the young face was painful to see. The light, the youth, the beauty seemed all to fade from it; it grew white, stricken, as though the pain of death were upon her. She clasped her hands as one who had lost all hope. "How am I to bear it?" she cried. "What am I to do?" She looked round her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her way--with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the plank of safety had been withdrawn. It was all over--life was all over; the love that had been her life was suddenly taken from her. Hope was dead--the past in which she had lived was all a plank--he did not love her. She said the words over and over again to herself. He did not love her, this man to whom she had given the passionate love of her whole heart and soul--he did not love her, and never intended to ask her to be his wife. Why, she had lived for this! This love, lying now in ruins around her, had been her existence. Standing there, in the first full pain of her despair, she realized what that love had been--her life, her hope, her world. She had lived in it; she had known no other wish, no other desire. It had been her all and now it was less than nothing. "How am I to live and bear it?" she asked herself again; and the only answer that came to her was the dull echo of her own despair.