Nurse demurred.  “You are sure that you won’t mind being left, sir?”

“Why not?” sharply.  “I am perfectly able to take care of myself.”

He watched them go in, then he gave orders to drive at once to the Connecticut Avenue entrance.

A woman stood by the gate, a tall woman in a long blue cloak and a close blue bonnet.  In the clear cold, her coloring showed vivid pink and white.  The General spoke through the tube; the chauffeur descended and opened the door.

“If you will get in,” the General said to the woman, “you can tell me what you have to say—­”

“Perhaps I should not have asked it,” Hilda said, hesitating, “but I had seen you riding in the Park, and I thought of this way—­I couldn’t of course, come to the house.”

“No.”  He had sunk down among his robes.  “No.”

“I felt that perhaps you had been led to—­misunderstand.”  She came directly to the point.  “I wanted to know—­what I had done—­what had made the difference.  I couldn’t believe that you had not meant what you said.”

He stirred uneasily.  “I have been very ill—­”

Her long white hands were ungloved, the diamonds that he had given her sparkled as she drew the ring off slowly.  “I felt that I ought to give you this—­if it was all really over.”

“It is all over.  But keep it—­please.”

“I should like to keep it,” she admitted frankly, “because, you see, I’ve never had a ring like this.”

It was the Cophetua and Beggar Maid motif but it left him cold.  “Hilda,” he said, “I saw you that night trying on my wife’s jewels.  That was my reason.”

She was plainly disconcerted.  “But that was child’s play.  I had never had anything—­it was like a child—­dressing up.”

“It was not like that to me.  I think I had been a rather fatuous fool—­thinking that there might be in me something that you might care for.  But I knew then that without my money—­you wouldn’t care—­”

“People’s motives are always mixed,” she told him.  “You know that.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You liked me because I was young and made you feel young.  I liked you because you could give me things.”

“Yes.  But now the glamour is gone.  You make me feel a thousand years old, Hilda.”

“Why?” in great surprise.

“Because I know that if I had no wealth to offer you, you would see me for what I am, an aged broken creature for whom you have no tenderness—­”

It was time for him to be getting back to the Lion House.  They stopped again at the gate.  “If you will keep the ring,” he said, “I shall be glad to think that you have it.  Jean gays Derry gave you a check.  If it is not enough to buy pink parasols, will you let me give you another?” He was speaking with the ease of his accustomed manner.

“No; I am not an—­adventuress, though you seem to think that I am, and to condemn me for it.”