“Ah, that shows that you didn’t lie awake grieving over your follies all night.  I hope you rested well, Miss Pasmer.”  She said nothing.  “If I thought—­if I could hope that you hadn’t, it would be a bond of sympathy, and I would give almost anything for a bond of sympathy just now, Miss Pasmer.  Alice!” he said, with sudden seriousness.  “I know that I’m not worthy even to think of you, and that you’re whole worlds above me in every way.  It’s that that takes all heart out of me, and leaves me without a word to say when I’d like to say so much.  I would like to speak—­tell you—­”

She interrupted him.  “I wish to speak to you, Mr. Mavering, and tell you that—­I’m very tired, and I’m going back to the hotel.  I must ask you to let me go back alone.”

“Alice, I love you.”

“I’m sorry you said it—­sorry, sorry.”

“Why?” he asked, with hopeless futility.

“Because there can be no love between us—­not friendship even—­not acquaintance.”

“I shouldn’t have asked for your acquaintance, your friendship, if—­” His words conveyed a delicate reproach, and they stung her, because they put her in the wrong.

“No matter,” she began wildly.  “I didn’t mean to wound you.  But we must part, and we must never see each other again:” 

He stood confused, as if he could not make it out or believe it.  “But yesterday—­”

“It’s to-day now.”

“Ah, no!  It’s last night.  And I can explain.”

“No!” she cried.  “You shall not make me out so mean and vindictive.  I don’t care for last night, nor for anything that happened.”  This was not true, but it seemed so to her at the moment; she thought that she really no longer resented his association with Miss Anderson and his separation from herself in all that had taken place.

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t tell you.  But everything is over between us—­that’s all.”

“But yesterday—­and all these days past—­you seemed—­”

“It’s unfair of you to insist—­it’s ungenerous, ungentlemanly.”

That word, which from a woman’s tongue always strikes a man like a blow in the face, silenced Mavering.  He set his lips and bowed, and they parted.  She turned upon her way, and he kept the path which she had been going.

It was not the hour when the piazzas were very full, and she slipped into the dim hotel corridor undetected, or at least undetained.  She flung into her room, and confronted her mother.

Mrs. Pasmer was there looking into a trunk that had overflowed from her own chamber.  “What is the matter?” she said to her daughter’s excited face.

“Mr. Mavering—­”

“Well?”

“And I refused him.”