"Aren't we that?" he said. "I understood that I represented both to you." She was silent because his last words had recalled a hard thing she had once in the years gone by written to him in an hour of wounded anger: "I do not know you... I think I have never known you. You are a stranger to me, and, I see now, my greatest enemy..." "It is for you," he added, filling in the pause, "to determine our future relations... I am a little surprised that you should meet me as you have done. And I'm not sure that it wouldn't have been happier for both if you had acted differently... The fires of yesterday are ashes on the hearth of to-day... I don't know how it is with you, but the sight of greying embers chills me." She sat leaning forward, her eyes fixed unseeingly straight before her as though they sought to pierce the blackness that lay beyond the stoep. Some of the pain and bitterness that was in her heart shone through them, so that they looked tortured in the soft glow of the artificial lights. She gripped the arm of her chair more tightly, and, still staring into the darkness, said tonelessly: "With women it is not usual to leave ashes lying on the hearth." "You sweep them up and throw them away," he answered. "It is wiser so... One forgets." "Some do," she rejoined slowly. "And others--collect their ashes carefully and kindle them anew." He looked at her closely. "Foolish and futile," he said. "Ashes can never give forth the glow and the heat of unspoilt fuel. A thing that is dead has served its end. It should then be applied to other uses; for it is impossible that it should ever again serve its original purpose." "If that is your philosophy," she began. "It is," he interrupted shortly. "Then with you the ashes remain ashes to despoil the hearth of to-day!" "I brush them out of sight," he returned lightly. "I have lived so long now amid the dust of such memories that I have learnt to turn my back upon the muddle till it no longer inconveniences me..." He smiled cynically, and added: "There was room for a retort there. You might have flung out at me that I have always shown a propensity for turning my back." She winced. His speech cut her more than he would have believed any words of his could wound her. It was with great difficulty that she kept back the tears. "That wasn't worthy of you," she said. He reddened suddenly. "I beg your pardon... It was an ill-considered remark. But it's one of the memories that sticks closest... The dust of it lies thick upon everything and clouds the rest of life." She sat back in the depths of her chair and turned her white face up to his; a great sadness and a great yearning showed in the beautiful eyes. "I think you make too much of it," she said... "The accident of a moment!" "An accident that ruined my career," he returned with great bitterness. "Not ruined it," she expostulated,--"checked it. You could have made a name and a place for yourself in spite of it."