“Wait,” suddenly exclaimed she, reaching out her hand for her fan with a gesture lofty as it was resolute.  “You have spoken a word which demands explanation; what have I ever done to you that you should speak the word recrimination to me?”

“What?  You shook my faith in womankind; you showed me that a woman who had once told a man she loved him, could so far forget that love as to marry one she could never respect, for the sake of titles and jewels.  You showed me—­”

“Hold,” said she again, this time without gesture or any movement, save that of her lips grown pallid as marb!e[sic], “and what did you show me?”

He started, colored profoundly, and for a moment stood before her unmasked of his stern self-possession.  “I beg your pardon,” said he, “I take back that word, recrimination.”

It was now her turn to lift her head and survey him.  With glance less cool than his, but fully as deliberate, she looked at his proud head bending before her; studying his face, line by line, from the stern brow to the closely compressed lips on which melancholy seemed to have set its everlasting seal, and a change passed over her countenance.  “Holman,” said she, with a sudden rush of tenderness, “if in the times gone by, we both behaved with too much worldly prudence for it now to be any great pleasure for either of us to look back, is that any reason why we should mar our whole future by dwelling too long upon what we are surely still young enough to bury if not forget?  I acknowledge that I would have behaved in a more ideal fashion, if, after I had been forsaken by you, I had turned my face from society, and let the canker-worm of despair slowly destroy whatever life and bloom I had left.  But I was young, and society had its charms, so did the prospect of wealth and position, however hollow they may have proved; you who are the master of both this day, because twelve months ago you forsook Evelyn Blake, should be the last to reproach me with them.  I do not reproach you; I only say let the past be forgotten—­”

“Impossible,” exclaimed he, his whole face darkening with an expression I could not fathom.  “What was done at that time cannot be undone.  For you and me there is no future.  Yes,” he said turning towards her as she made a slight fluttering move of dissent, “no future; we can bury the past, but we can not resurrect it.  I doubt if you would wish to if we could; as we cannot, of course you will not desire even to converse upon the subject again.  Evelyn I wanted to see you once, but I do not wish to see you again; will you pardon my plain speaking, and release me?”

“I will pardon your plain speaking, but—­” Her look said she would not release him.

He seemed to understand it so, and smiled, but very bitterly.  In another moment he had bowed and gone, and she had returned to her crowd of adoring sycophants.

CHAPTER VI