Suddenly she knew she would never marry him.  She faced the future, with all that it implied, and she knew she could not do it.  It was horrible that she had even contemplated it.  It would be terrible to tell Wallie, but not as terrible as the other thing.  She saw herself then with the same clearness with which she had judged Dick.  She too, leaving her havoc of wrecked lives behind her; she too going along her headstrong way, raising hopes not to be fulfilled, and passing on.  She too.

That evening, Christmas eve, she told Wallie she would not marry him.  Told him very gently, and just after an attempt of his to embrace her.  She would not let him do it.

“I don’t know what’s come over you,” he said morosely.  “But I’ll let you alone, if that’s the way you feel.”

“I’m sorry, Wallie.  It—­it makes me shiver.”

In a way he was prepared for it but nevertheless he begged for time, for a less unequivocal rejection.  But he found her, for the first time, impatient with his pleadings.

“I don’t want to go over and over it, Wallie.  I’ll take the blame.  I should have done it long ago.”

She was gentle, almost tender with him, but when he said she had spoiled his life for him she smiled faintly.

“You think that now.  And don’t believe I’m not sorry.  I am.  I hate not playing the game, as you say.  But I don’t think for a moment that you’ll go on caring when you know I don’t.  That doesn’t happen.  That’s all.”

“Do you know what I think?” he burst out.  “I think you’re still mad about Livingstone.  I think you are so mad about him that you don’t know it yourself.”

But she only smiled her cool smile and went on with her knitting.  After that he got himself in hand, and—­perhaps he still had some hope.  It was certain that she had not flinched at Dick’s name —­told her very earnestly that he only wanted her happiness.  He didn’t want her unless she wanted him.  He would always love her.

“Not always,” she said, with tragically cold certainty.  “Men are not like women; they forget.”

She wondered, after he had gone, what had made her say that.

She did not tell the family that night.  They were full of their own concerns, Nina’s coming maternity, the wrapping of packages behind closed doors, the final trimming of the tree in the library.  Leslie had started the phonograph, and it was playing “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.”

Still night, holy night, and only in her was there a stillness that was not holy.

They hung up their stockings valiantly as usual, making a little ceremony of it, and being careful not to think about Jim’s missing one.  Indeed, they made rather a function of it, and Leslie demanded one of Nina’s baby socks and pinned it up.

“I’m starting a bank account for the little beggar,” he said, and dropped a gold piece into the toe.  “Next year, old girl”