“Why, what is it?” he asked innocently, as he took it from her.

“A bouquet, apparently,” she answered, as he drew the long ribbons through his fingers, and looked at the flowers curiously, with his head aslant.

“Where did you get it?”

“On the shelf.”

It seemed a long time before Burnamy said with a long sigh, as of final recollection, “Oh, yes,” and then he said nothing; and they did not sit down, but stood looking at each other.

“Was it something you got for me, and forgot to give me?” she asked in a voice which would not have misled a woman, but which did its work with the young man.

He laughed and said, “Well, hardly!  The general has been in the room ever since you came.”

“Oh, yes.  Then perhaps somebody left it there before you had the room?”

Burnamy was silent again, but at last he said, “No, I flung it up there I had forgotten all about it.”

“And you wish me to forget about it, too?” Agatha asked in a gayety of tone that still deceived him.

“It would only be fair.  You made me,” he rejoined, and there was something so charming in his words and way, that she would have been glad to do it.

But she governed herself against the temptation and said, “Women are not good at forgetting, at least till they know what.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you, if you want to know,” he said with a laugh, and at the words she—­sank provisionally in their accustomed seat.  He sat down beside her, but not so near as usual, and he waited so long before he began that it seemed as if he had forgotten again.  “Why, it’s nothing.  Miss Etkins and her mother were here before you came, and this is a bouquet that I meant to give her at the train when she left.  But I decided I wouldn’t, and I threw it onto the shelf in the closet.”

“May I ask why you thought of taking a bouquet to her at the train?”

“Well, she and her mother—­I had been with them a good deal, and I thought it would be civil.”

“And why did you decide not to be civil?”

“I didn’t want it to look like more than civility.”

“Were they here long?”

“About a week.  They left just after the Marches came.”

Agatha seemed not to heed the answer she had exacted.  She sat reclined in the corner of the seat, with her head drooping.  After an interval which was long to Burnamy she began to pull at a ring on the third finger of her left hand, absently, as if she did not know what she was doing; but when she had got it off she held it towards Burnamy and said quietly, “I think you had better have this again,” and then she rose and moved slowly and weakly away.

He had taken the ring mechanically from her, and he stood a moment bewildered; then he pressed after her.

“Agatha, do you—­you don’t mean—­”

“Yes,” she said, without looking round at his face, which she knew was close to her shoulder.  “It’s over.  It isn’t what you’ve done.  It’s what you are.  I believed in you, in spite of what you did to that man—­and your coming back when you said you wouldn’t—­and—­But I see now that what you did was you; it was your nature; and I can’t believe in you any more.”