“Be a darling and we’ll forget it all!” he exclaimed.

He made a step forward, but shrinking back until she appeared almost to crouch against the wall, she put out her hands as if warding off his approach.

“Don’t touch me!” she said; and though she spoke in a whisper, her words seemed to shriek back at her from the air.  The thought that she was fighting for the freedom of her soul rushed through her brain, and at the instant, had he laid his hand upon her, she knew that she would have thrown herself from the window.

“I don’t want to touch you,” he returned, cooling immediately, “but can’t you come to your senses and be reasonable?”

“If you don’t mind I wish you’d go,” she said, looking at him with a smile which was like the smile of a statue.

“If I go now will you promise to get sensible again?” he asked, with annoyance, for it occurred to him that since he had made up his mind to be magnanimous, she had repulsed his generosity in a most ungrateful fashion.

“I am sensible,” she responded, “I am sensible for the first time for months.”

“Well, you’ve a pretty way of showing it,” he retorted.  His irritation got suddenly the better of him, and fearing that it might break out in spite of his control, he turned toward the door.  “For God’s sake, let’s make the best of it now,” he added desperately.

In his nervousness he stumbled against the table and upset the red leather box which contained the coffee service.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, and stooping to pick it up, he replaced the silver in the case before he went into the hall and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER III

PROVES A GREAT CITY TO BE A GREAT SOLITUDE

After he had gone Laura remained standing where he had left her, until the sound of the hail door closing sharply caused her to draw a breath of relief as if there had come a temporary lifting of the torture she endured.  Then, with her first movement, as she looked about the room in the effort to bring order into the confusion of her thoughts, her eyes encountered the array of wedding presents, and the expression of her face changed back into the panic terror in which she had couched against the wall before Kemper’s approach.  She still saw herself revealed in the light of the scorn which had blazed in his eyes; and the one idea which possessed her now was to escape beyond the place where that look might again reach her.  An instinct for flight like that of a wild thing in a jungle shook through her until she stood in a quiver from head to foot; and though she knew neither where she was going, nor of what use this flight would be to her, she went into her bedroom and began to dress herself hastily in her walking clothes.  As she tied on her veil and took up her little black bag from the drawer she heard her own voice, which sounded to her ears like the voice of a stranger, repeating