She shakes her head.

“Give me a kind word before I go,” says Rylton earnestly.

“What can I say?”

“Say that you will think of what I have been urging.”

“One must think,” says she, in a rather refractory tone.

“You promise, then?”

“Yes; I shall think.”

“Until to-morrow, then,” says he, holding out his hand.

“To-morrow?”

She looks troubled.

“Yes; to-morrow.  Don’t forbid me to come to-morrow.”

He presses her hand.

The troubled look still rests upon her face as she turns away from him, having bidden him good-bye.  The last memory of her he takes away with him is of a little slender figure standing at the window, with her hands clasped behind her back.  She does not look back at him.

* * * * *

“Well?” says Margaret, coming into the room half an hour later.  “Why, what a little snowflake you are!  Come up to the fire and warm those white cheeks.  Was it Maurice made you look like that?  I shall scold him.  What did he say to you?”

“He wants me to go back to him.”

“Yes?” anxiously.

“Well——­ That’s all.”

“But you, dearest?”

“Oh, I can’t bear to think of it!” cries Tita, in a miserable tone.

At this Margaret feels hope dying within her.  Beyond question she has again refused to be reconciled to him.  Margaret is so fond of the girl that it goes to her very heart to see her thus wilfully (as she believes) throwing away her best chance of happiness in this world.

“Tita, have you well considered what you are doing?  A woman separated from her husband, no matter how free from blame she may be, is always regarded with coldness by——­”

“Oh, yes!  I know,” impatiently. "He has been saying all that.”

“And, after all, what has Maurice done that you should be so hard with him?  Many a man has loved another woman before his marriage.  That old story——­”

“It isn’t that,” says Tita suddenly.  “It is”—­she lays her hands on Margaret’s shoulders, and regards her earnestly and with agitation—­“it is that I fear myself."

“You fear”—­uncertainly—­“that you don’t love him?”

“Pshaw!” says Tita, letting her go, and rising to her feet, as though to sit still is impossible to her.  “What a speech from you to me—­you, who know all! Love him!  I am sure about that, at all events.  I know I don’t.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Positive—­positive!"

“What?  Not even one doubt?”

“Not one.”

“What is your fear, then?” asks Margaret.

“That even if I went back to him, took up my old position, asked his guests to our house, and so on, that sooner or later I should quarrel with him a second time, and then this dreadful work would have to be done all over again.”