Again he repeated, ‘I have no choice.’

‘Because you have chosen.’

‘In my heart, in my soul, I have chosen you.’

‘And yet you are going back to some one else?’

‘For a year, and possibly less than that. Cannot you look at it as I do? We have life before us, but there is death in her eyes—death already, as I saw it, upon her lips. There is the grave between us’, he urged, and ended with a new note of sadness. ‘Isn’t that space enough?’

‘It is invisible,’ she returned, ‘so do not blame me if I cannot see it. I can see only that there is a woman, or her shadow, between you and me.’

‘Is that your last word?’ he asked, almost at that moment hoping it might be, aware that words had availed them little—brought no illumination and no relief.

‘No’, she broke forth suddenly, doffing the coldness and the calmness of her attitude petulantly, like an overweighted garment. ‘My last word is that I love you, Alan, and that by your own admission you belong to me.’ She crossed the room and threw herself upon him,—‘I cannot and I will not let you go.’

He caught her with a short, familiar cry of welcome, and held her for a second; then releasing her, he rested a hand upon her dark and slightly ruffled hair.

‘So you will wait?’

He spoke simply his first thought; but at its utterance she sprang away.

‘No, not that—not that.’

‘What, then?’ he asked bewilderedly. ‘You will not trust me?’

‘She trusted you’, the girl exclaimed, letting through her lips, in this last moment of distraction, the reminder which had hovered behind them once or twice before. ‘She let you go; and though she does not know it, you have failed her, or so you say; indeed, I do not know what to believe of you.’

‘That is true’, he said. ‘God knows that I have failed her; that is true.’

‘Give me a pledge that you will not fail me.’

‘What pledge?’ he asked; and added passionately; ‘any, any I can give is yours.’

‘Give me the only credible one,’ she urged, ‘and stay with me.’

He paused,—perplexed, dubious, stung; swaying upon a second choice. To which woman did he owe most? They seemed, as he stood there irresolute, both stationed before his vision, calling upon him that he should not fail. The one more distant, miniature and frail, a form of fading loveliness, in the posture of halting life; the other—she who stood beside him—vigorous, beautiful, distinct and dear, her feet strongly planted upon the stair of youth. The physical contrast struck him forcibly, and yet it was not that which brought conclusion to his contending thought. It was a sentence, spoken sweetly by a decisive voice proceeding from a chamber, which to his view was dimmer than the room wherein he stood—‘We were neither of us made to turn our backs upon what lies before us or pull long faces at a foe.’

With that in his ears he faced the tacit foe before him urging mutely in counter-claim.