“Ah, he is going in to spend the evening with his beloved,” he thought.

And Clarence resolved, then and there, not to call on Beth the following day, as he had intended.

But Arthur proceeded absently to the room Marie had formerly occupied, without the slightest idea that Beth had lived in the house with him nearly two months.  It was strange, but though he had seen all the other girls in the house he had never seen Beth.  He had not enquired her address the year before, not wishing to know.  He wished to have nothing to do with Clarence Mayfair’s promised wife.  She was nothing to him.  Should he encourage the love he felt for another’s wife?  No!  He had loved with all the strength of that love that comes but once to any human heart, and he had suffered as only the strong and silent can suffer; but he had resolved to bury his pain, and it had given his face a sterner look.  So he lay down to rest that night all unconscious that Beth was in the room just overhead; that he had heard her footsteps daily, even listened to her humming little airs to unrecognizable tunes; but the sight of Clarence Mayfair had aroused the past, and he did not sleep till late.

The following afternoon, as Beth sat studying in her room after lectures, she heard a faint tap at her door, a timid knock that in some way seemed to appeal strangely to her.  She opened the door—­and there stood Marie!  In the first moment of her surprise Beth forgot everything that had separated them, and threw both arms about her in the old child-like way.  She seated her in the rocker by the window and they talked of various things for a while, but Beth noticed, now and then, an uneasy look in her eyes.

“She has come to tell me she is going to marry Clarence, and she finds it difficult, poor girl,” thought Beth, with a heart full of sympathy.

“Beth,” said Marie at last, “I have wronged you.  I have come here to ask you to forgive me.”

Beth belonged to the kind of people who are always silent in emergencies, so she only looked at her with her great tender eyes, in which there was no trace of resentment.

“I came between you and Clarence Mayfair.  He never loved me.  It was only a fancy.  I amused and interested him, I suppose.  That was all.  He is true to you in the depths of his heart, Beth.  It was my fault—­all my fault.  He never loved me.  It was you he loved, but I encouraged him.  It was wrong, I know.”

Something seemed to choke her for a moment.

“Will you forgive me, Beth?  Can you ever forgive?”

She was leaning forward gracefully, her fur cape falling back from her shoulders and her dark eyes full of tears.

Beth threw both arms about her old friend tenderly, forgetting all the bitter thoughts she had once had.

“Oh, Marie, dear, I love you—­I love you still.  Of course I forgive you.”

Then Beth told her all the story of the past, and of that night when she had learned that Clarence did not love her, of her wounded vanity, her mistaken belief in the genuineness of her own love for him, and her gradual awakening to the fact that it was not love after all.