think--to remember--oh! if only I had run straight, Jack--I don't
think I was meant for this, do you?"

He had no words with which to answer her. He folded his arms across
his chest and looked out vaguely into the slant of room beyond. The
folding doors were open and on the sideboard he could see a basket
full of peaches, at this season an extravagance denied his own table.
On the mantelshelf to his right hand were some exquisite hot-house
flowers, carelessly crushed into a cracked, cheap little vase, and a
penny packet of stationery and a powder puff in a sprinkling of
chalk.

She stretched out her arms so that her fingers touched him, and he
held them tightly in his own--rings and all.

She was never meant for the life she had chosen!

His heart felt breaking.

The delicate features, the sweet, wistful, childish face, the pathos
in her regretful cry--the past with its load of gall and shame and
misery--which could never be obliterated. Never!

"Why do you look at me like that? I am better. I know I am better. I
thought--I feared--I was going to die; if I had there was no one to
care but--Saidie."

"Do you not think what it would mean to--me?"

The words broke from him against his will.