'Now the time has come for you to tell me what I most want to know,'
she said.

'What is that?'

'Why you went away.'

'Oh,' he murmured.

She waited a minute. Then, 'Tell me,' she urged.

'Do you remember Mary Isona?' he asked.

She glanced up at him suddenly, as if startled. 'Mary Isona? Yes, of
course.'

'Well, I was in love with her.'

'You were in love with Mary Isona?'

'I was very much in love with her. I have never got over it, I'm
afraid.'

She gazed fixedly at the fire. Her lips were compressed. She saw a
slender girl, in a plain black frock, with a sensitive, pale face,
luminous, sad, dark eyes, and a mass of dark, waving hair--Mary
Isona, of Italian parentage, a little music teacher, whose only
relation to the world Theodore Vellan lived in was professional. She
came into it for an hour or two at a time now and then, to play or to
give a music lesson.