Alice took the volume and began to read in a low voice: 

    “Je n’aimais qu’elle au monde, et vivre un jour sans elle
    Me semblait un destin plus affreux que la mort. 
    Je me souviens pourtant qu’en cette nuit cruelle
    Pour briser mon lien je fis un long effort. 
    Je la nommai cent fois perfide et deloyale,
    Je comptai tous les maux qu’elle m’avait causes.”

She stopped suddenly, her eyes full of pain.

“You don’t think that, you can’t think that of me?” she pleaded.

“I’d rather think you a coquette than—­” Again he checked himself at the sight of her trouble.  He could not speak harshly to her.

“You dear child,” he went on tenderly.  “I’ll never believe any ill of you, never.  I won’t even ask your reasons; but I want some encouragement, something to work for.  I’ve got to have it.  Just let me go on hoping; say that in six months or—­or even a year you will be my own sweetheart—­promise me that and I’ll wait patiently.  Can’t you promise me that?”

But again she shook her head, while her eyes filled slowly with tears.

And now his face darkened.  “Then you will never be my wife?  Never?  No matter what I do or how long I wait?  Is that it?”

“That’s it,” she repeated with a little sob.

Kittredge rose, eying her sternly.  “I understand,” he said, “or rather I don’t understand; but there’s no use talking any more.  I’ll take my medicine and—­good-by.”

She looked at him in frightened supplication.  “You won’t leave me?  Lloyd, you won’t leave me?”

He laughed harshly.  “What do you think I am?  A jumping jack for you to pull a string and make me dance?  Well, I guess not.  Leave you?  Of course I’ll leave you.  I wish I had never seen you; I’m sorry I ever came inside this blooming church!”

“Oh!” she gasped, in sudden pain.

“You don’t play fair,” he went on recklessly.  “You haven’t played fair at all.  You knew I loved you, and—­you led me on, and—­this is the end of it.”

“No,” she cried, stung by his words, “it’s not the end of it.  I won’t be judged like that.  I have played fair with you.  If I hadn’t I would have accepted you, for I love you, Lloyd, I love you with all my heart!”

“I like the way you show it,” he answered, unrelenting.

“Haven’t I helped you all these months?  Isn’t my friendship something?”

He shook his head.  “It isn’t enough for me.”

“Then how about me, if I want your friendship, if I’m hungry for it, if it’s all I have in life?  How about that, Lloyd?” Under their dark lashes her violet eyes were burning on him, but he hardened his heart to their pleading.

“It sounds well, but there’s no sense in it.  I can’t stand for this let-me-be-a-sister-to-you game, and I won’t.”

He turned away impatiently and glanced at his watch.