She had both hands pressed to her breast as if to stay an uncontrollable feeling.  Her eyes, dilated and wide, expressed a blending of emotions.

“No, no, no!” she cried.

Lane went on just the same with other words, in other vein, reiterating the same importunity.  It was a tragic game, in which he divined he must lose.  But the playing of it had inexplicably bitter-sweet pain.  He knew now that Mel loved him.  No greater proof needed he than the perception of her reaction to one word on his lips—­wife.  She quivered to that like a tautly strung lyre touched by a skilful hand.  It fascinated her.  But the temptation to accept his offer for the sake of her boy’s future was counteracted by the very strength of her feeling for Lane.  She would not marry him, because she loved him.

Lane read this truth, and it wrung a deeper reverence from him.  And he saw, too, the one way in which he could break her spirit, make her surrender, if he could stoop to it.  If he could take her in his arms, and hold her tight, and kiss her dumb and blind, and make her understand his own love for her, his need of her, she would accede with the wondrous generosity of a woman’s heart.  But he could not do it.

In the end, out of sheer pity that overcame the strange delight he had in torturing her, he desisted in his appeals and demands and subtle arguments.  The long strain left him spent.  And with the sudden let-down of his energy, the surrender to her stronger will, he fell prey at once to the sadness that more and more was encompassing him.  He felt an old and broken man.

To this sudden change in Lane Mel responded with mute anxiety and fear.  The alteration of his spirit stunned her.  As he bade her good-bye she clung to him.

“Daren, forgive me,” she implored.  “You don’t understand....  Oh, it’s hard.”

“Never mind, Mel.  I guess it was just one of my dreams.  Don’t cry....  Good-bye.”

“But you’ll come again?” she entreated, almost wildly.

Lane shook his head.  He did not trust himself to look at her then.

“Daren, you can’t mean that,” she cried.  “It’s too late for me.  I—­I—­Oh!  You....  To uplift me—­then to cast me down!  Daren, come back.”

In his heart he did not deny that cry of hers.  He knew he would come back, knew it with stinging shame, but he could not tell her.  It had all turned out so differently from what he had dreamed.  If he had not loved her he would not have felt defeat.  To have made her his wife would have been to protect her, to possess her even after he was dead.

At the last she let him go.  He felt her watching him, and he carried her lingering clasp away with him, to burn and to thrill and to haunt, and yet to comfort him in lonely hours.

But the next day the old spirit resurged anew, and unreconciled to defeat, he turned to what was left him.  Foolish and futile hopes!  To bank on the single grain of good in his wayward sister’s heart!  To trust the might of his spirit—­to beat down the influence of an intolerant and depraved young millionaire—­verily he was mad.  Yet he believed.  And as a final resort he held death in his hand.  Richard Swann swaggered by Lane that night in the billiard room of the Bradford Inn and stared sneeringly at him.