“Until that time I’ll not—­not even—­kiss the top of your hair, Harriet,” he said.

In the mad rushing of her senses she could not find the right word, but she detained him with an entreating hand.  Her eyes, shining with a look that he had never seen there before, were fixed on his.  But Richard did not look at her eyes, he looked down at the hand she had laid on his own.

“I don’t think,” Harriet said, breathlessly, “that I can ever like you any more than I do!”

She had meant it for surrender; her heart was beating wildly with the glorious shame of a proud woman who gives herself.  But Richard was not looking at the betraying eyes.  In the great new love that had swept him from all his old moorings there was a deep humility.  He only heard her say that she could never learn to love him.  He bent his head over her finger tips, and kissed them, as he said quietly: 

“But I’m going to try to make you, just the same!”

Then he was gone, and Harriet was standing alone in the softly lighted room.  For a few moments she remained perfectly still, with her white hands pressed to her burning cheeks.  Then, shaken with joy and surprise, with a delicious terror and something of a child’s innocent chagrin, she went noiselessly back to her own room, closed the communicating door, and undressed with pauses for the dreams that would come creeping over body and soul, and hold her in their exquisite stillness for long minutes together.

She was brushing her hair when Nina suddenly appeared, and came lifelessly in to sit on the edge of Harriet’s bed.  “I want to ask you something!” Nina said, in an odd voice.  “And, Harriet, I want you to tell me the truth!”

Harriet, turning, faced her between two curtains of rippling gold.  She saw a new Nina, a subdued, thoughtful, serious woman in the old confident Nina’s place.

“But first I ought to tell you that I wasn’t with Amy to-day!” Nina said.

“Oh, Nina!  Must we begin that sort of thing?” Harriet reproached her.  But she was puzzled by Nina’s manner.  “Back to school-girl tricks!” she said.

“Never back to a school-girl,” Nina said, with trembling lips.  “No,” she added, passionately, “I’ll never be that again.  Harriet,” she went on, “I’ve written Royal three times, since my birthday, and I’ve seen him twice.”

“You saw him to-day?” Harriet ventured.

“I went there this afternoon,” Nina admitted, heavily.  Then suddenly, “Harriet, did my father pay him—­did he take money—­to break our engagement?”

“Nina, what a horrible thought!  Of course not!” Harriet could fortunately answer in perfect honesty.

“Oh, Harriet,” the girl caught her hands, turning sick and imploring eyes toward her, “are you sure?”

“Nina, dear, your father would have told me!”

“He might not—­he might not!” Nina said, feverishly.  “But if he did——!” she whispered, half to herself.  “That’s Pilgrim, I rang for her,” she said, of a knock on her own door.  “Ask my father to come up, will you?” she said to the maid, when Pilgrim appeared.  “We’ll settle it now!”