A tall, slight figure rises from a couch that is half hidden by a Chinese screen.  She comes forward a step or two.  Her face is pale.  It is Marian Bethune.

“You!” says she in a low, strange voice.  “Have you come here, too, to think?" She speaks with difficulty.  Then all at once she makes a stray movement with her hands, and brings herself to her senses by a passionate effort.  “You are like me, you want quiet,” says she, with a very ordinary little laugh; “so you came here.  Well, shall I leave you?”

She is looking very beautiful.  Her pallor, the violet shades beneath her eyes, all tend to make her lovely.

“It is you who have left me.”

“I?  Oh no!  Oh, think!” says she, laughing still.

Rylton draws a long breath.

“After all, it could never have come to anything,” says he, in a dull sort of way.

“Never, never,” smiling.

“I don’t believe you care,” says he bitterly.

She looks at him.  It is a curious look.

“Why should I?  Do you care?”

He turns away.

“Don’t let us part bad friends,” says she, going to him, and twining one of her hands round his arm.  “What have I done to you, or you to me?  How have we been enemies?  It is fate, it is poverty that has been our common enemy, Maurice, remember what we have been to each other.”

“It is what I dare not remember,” says he hoarsely.

His face is resolutely turned from hers.

“Well, well, forget, then, if you can.  As for me, remembrance will be my sole joy.”

“It is madness, Marian, to talk to me like this.  What is to be gained by it?”

“Why, nothing, nothing, and so let us forget; let us begin again as true friends only.”

“There is no hope of that,” says he.

His voice is a mere whisper.

“Oh yes, there is—­there,” eagerly, "must be.  What!  Would you throw me over altogether, Maurice?  Oh, that I could not bear!  Why should we not be as brother and sister to each other?  Yes, yes,” vehemently; “tell me it shall be so.  You will ask me to your new house, Maurice, won’t you?”

She is looking up into his face, her hand still pressing his arm.

“My wife’s house.”

“Your wife’s house is yours, is it not?  You owe yourself something from this marriage.  You will ask me there now and then?”

“She will ask her own guests, I suppose.”

“She will ask whom you choose.  Pah! what is she but a child in your hands?”

“Tita is not the cipher you describe her,” says Rylton coldly.

“No, no; I spoke wrongly—­I am always wrong, it seems to me,” says she, with such sweet contrition that she disarms him again.  “I cannot live if I cannot see you sometimes, and, besides, you know what my life is here, and how few are the houses I can go to, and”—­she slips her arms suddenly round his neck—­“you will ask me sometimes, Maurice?”