Then just as he had grown almost hopeless of ever seeing her again, he found her one evening in the elevator as he went up to his mother’s rooms.  The touch of her cold little hand on his sent a sudden shock to his heart, and while he looked anxiously into her face, he saw her go deadly pale and bite her lip sharply as if to bring back her consciousness by the sting of pain.

“You are ill,” he said eagerly; “don’t deny it, for haven’t I eyes?  Yes, you must, you shall come with me in to mother.”

Even then she would have turned proudly away, but with his impulsive, lover’s sympathy he led her from the elevator upon the landing on which he lived.  “She is waiting for you—­she wants you,” he urged with passion; “and can’t you see—­oh, Christina, I want you, too!”

But his fervour only left her the more cold and shrinking, and she shook her head with a refusal that was almost angry.

“How dare you?  Why did you make me come out?” she asked.  “I must go back—­I am not well—­oh, I must go back!”

Over the angry tones of her voice he saw her entreating eyes shining like wet flowers, and as he looked into them it came to him in a revelation of knowledge that the meaning of everything that had been was made clear at last.  He knew now why he had succeeded where Christina had failed—­he knew why Laura had refused his love, and why, even in his misery, her refusal had left his heart untouched.  And beyond all these things, he realised that now his boyhood was over and that from the experience of this one moment he had become a man.

CHAPTER II

THE DEIFICATION OF CLAY

Not until a month after the announcement of Laura’s engagement did she come face to face for the first time with the ugly skeleton which lies hidden beneath the most beautiful of dreams.  The spring had passed in a troubled rapture; and it was on one of the bright, warm days in early June that she found awaiting her on the hall table when she came in from her walk a letter addressed in a strange handwriting and bearing a strange foreign postmark.  Beside this was a note from Kemper explaining a broken engagement of the day before; and she read first her lover’s letter, which ended, as every letter of his had ended since the beginning of their love, “Yours with my whole heart and soul, Arnold.”

With an emotion which repetition could never deaden, she stooped to kiss the last sentence he had written, before she turned carelessly to take up the strange foreign envelope, which she had thrown, with her veil and gloves, on the chair at her side.  For a moment she pondered indifferently the address; then, almost as she broke the seal, the first words she read were those which lay hidden away in the love letter within her hand, “Yours with my whole heart and soul, Arnold.”