should look up.

When she did lift her eyes, his smile could not come. For her face was grey
and her lips bloodless and from her eyes looked despair. Howard glanced
away instantly. With rude hand he had suddenly toppled into the dust this
child's dream-castle of love and happiness which he had himself helped her
build. He felt like a criminal. But partly from a sense of duty, chiefly
from the cowardice of self-preservation, he made no effort to lighten her
suffering.

"I should only prolong it," he thought, "only make matters worse.
To-morrow--perhaps."

If she had been worldly wise, even if she had not been so completely
absorbed in her worship of him that her woman-instincts were dormant, she
would herself have found hope. But she had not a suspicion that these
strong words of apparent finality were spoken to give himself courage, to
keep him from obeying the impulse to respond to the appeal of her youth to
his, her aloneness to his, her passion to his. She believed him literally.

There was a long silence. He heard her move, heard a suppressed cry and
glanced toward her again. She was darting from the room. A second later her
door crashed. He started up and after her, hesitated, returned to his
book--but not to his reading.

Toward noon the next day, he passed her room on his way out. The door was
wide open; none of her belongings was in sight; the maid was sweeping
energetically. She paused when she saw him.

"Miss Alice left this morning," she said, "and the room's been let to