“Would you be guided by me, Bertie?” she asked, suddenly ceasing her movement with the window and going very close to him indeed—­so close that he could feel the gracious warmth of her face and bare neck and shoulders.  “Would you be guided by me, I wonder?”

“Have I not been guided by you up to the present, Ella?” said he.  “Should I be here to-night if it were not for your goodness?  I laughed some time ago—­how long ago it seems!—­when you told me—­you said it was your dearest wish—­I did not then believe it possible——­”

“And do you fancy that I believed it possible?” she asked, with some sadness in her voice.

“Great Heavens!  Ella, do you mean to tell me that you——­Oh, no, it is impossible!  You knew me.”

“I fancied that I knew you, Bertie.  I fancied that I knew myself.”

“Ella, Ella, for God’s sake don’t let us drift again.  Have you no recollection of that terrible time through which we both passed—­that ordeal by fire.  Ella, we were plucked from the fire—­she plucked us from the very fire of hell itself—­oh, don’t let us drift in that direction again!”

He had walked away from her.  He was beginning to recall too vividly the old days, under the influence of her gracious presence so close to him—­not so close as it had been, but still close enough to bring back old memories.

“Come here and stand beside me, Bertie,” said she.

After a moment’s hesitation he went to her, slowly, not with the rapture of a lover—­not with the old passion trembling in his hands, on his lips.

He went to her.

She put her hands behind her and looked at him in the face for a long time.  The even-songs of the birds mixed with the scent of the roses; the blue shadow of the twilight was darkening over the trees at the foot of her garden.

“Do you remember the oleanders?” she said.  “I never breathe in such a twilight as this without seeing before me the oleanders outlined against its blue.  It was very sweet at that old place on the Arno.”

“Ella, Ella—­for God’s sake——­”

“You told me that terrible secret of your life—­that you loved me.  I wonder if I knew what it meant, Bertie?  I told you that I loved you:  that was more terrible still.  I wonder if you knew what that meant, Bertie?”

He did not speak.

The bird’s songs outside were becoming softer and more intermittent.

She gave a sudden cry as if stung with pain, and started away from the window.  She threw herself down on the couch, burying her face in the pillows—­he could see through the dim room the whiteness of her arms.  She was breathing convulsively; but she was not sobbing.

He remained beside the open window.  He, too, was not breathing so regularly as he had breathed a short time before.

He heard the sigh that came from her as she raised her head from the pillow.

Then she said: