civil to this person.'"

"Yes," he said, "and that's just what I complain of; it gives me, the
new man to-night, a feeling of insecurity—that perhaps you are just
'carrying on' with me because it is your whim, and that the instant
I bore you, you will throw me away like a broken toy, and with even
less regret."

"How dare you speak like that to me?" she said, turning upon him
almost fiercely. "I never forget people." And she rose and went
quickly into the room, and didn't speak to him for the rest of the
evening.

But just as he was going out he passed her, and hardly looked at her,
thinking he had offended her; but she came and put out her hand
quickly, and said, almost pathetically—

"You must forgive me for my behaviour to-night, Mr. Hamilton. What
you said was not true, but you meant it to be true; you believed it.
And please don't stop talking to me openly. I value it very much.
I have so few people to tell me the truth."

I find this conversation narrated in his diary, almost word for word
as I have given it. But there is omitted from it, necessarily
perhaps, the most pregnant comment of all.

"And yet," he said to me once, as he turned to leave the room after
commenting upon their freedom of speech with one another, "I am not
in love with her, though I can't think why I am not."