of women to men—­that quality of callousness which allows them to commit all cruelties in the name of self-sacrifice, and that lack of imagination by which they are blinded to the wounds they deal.  Women have brief moods in which they judge themselves as men judge them, in which they escape from their sex and know the truth.  Such a mood came then to Leonora.  And she wished ardently to compensate Arthur for the martyrdom which she had inflicted on him.  They were close to one another.  The atmosphere between them was electric.  And the darkness of a calm and delicious night was falling.  Could she not obey her instinct, and in one bright word, one word laden with the invitation and acquiescence of femininity, atone for her sin against him?  Could she not shatter the images of Rose and Milly, who loved her after their hard fashion, but who would never thank her for her watchful affection—­would even resent it?  Vain hope!

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed grievously, trying uselessly to keep the dream of joyous indulgence from fading away.  ’I must tell you—­I cannot leave them!’

‘Leave whom?’

’The girls—­Rose and Milly.  I daren’t.  You don’t know what I went through after John’s death—­and I can’t desert them.  I should have told you in my next letter.’

Her tones moved not only him but herself.  He was obliged at once to receive what she said with the utmost seriousness, as something fully weighed and considered.

‘Do you mean,’ he demanded, ’that you won’t marry me and come to New York?’

‘I can’t, I can’t,’ she replied.

He got up and walked along the garden towards the meadow, so far that in the twilight her eyes could scarcely distinguish his figure against the bushes.  Then he returned.

‘Just let me hear all about the girls.’  He stood in front of her.

‘You see,’ she said entreatingly, when she had hurried through her recital, ‘I couldn’t leave them, could I?’

But instead of answering, he questioned her further about Milly’s projects, and made suggestions, and they seemed to have been discussing the complex subject for an hour before she found a chance to reassert, plaintively:  ‘I couldn’t leave them.’

‘You’re entirely wrong,’ he said firmly and authoritatively.  ’You’ve just got an idea fixed in your head, and it’s all wrong, all wrong.’

‘It isn’t as if they were going to be married,’ she obstinately pursued the sequence of her argument.  ‘Ethel now——­’

‘Married!’ he cried, roused.  ’Are we to wait patiently, you and I, until Rose and Milly choose to get married?’ He was bitterly scornful.  ’Is that our role?  I fancy I know something about Rose and Milly, and allow me to tell you they never will get married, neither of them.  They aren’t the marrying sort.  Not but what that’s beside the point!...  Yes,’ he continued, ’and if there ever were two girls in this world able to look after themselves without parental assistance Rose and Milly are those two.’