gifts he had bestowed on her?  Poor Nina! she had always been so wilful—­so easily pleased, so easily offended—­but of late he had rather forgotten that, for she had been bearing herself with what she regarded as an English manner; and indeed their friendship had been so constant and unvarying, so kind and considerate on both sides, that there had been no opportunity for the half-vexed, half-laughing quarrels of earlier days.  He would seek out this spoiled child (he said to himself) and scold her into being good again.  And yet, even as he tried to persuade himself that all would still be well, he could not help recalling the fierce vehemence with which Nina had repudiated the suggestion that perhaps she might let some one else drink out of this hapless loving-cup that now lay before him.  “I would rather have it dashed to pieces and thrown into the sea!” she had said, with pale face and quivering lips and eyes bordering on tears.  He remembered that he had been a little surprised at the time—­not thinking what it all might mean.

CHAPTER XVII.

A CRISIS.

When he went down to Sloane Street in the morning, he found Estelle eagerly awaiting him.  She received him in Nina’s small parlor; Mrs. Grey had just gone out.  A glance round the room did not show him any difference, except that a row of photographs (of himself, mostly, in various costumes) had disappeared from the mantelshelf.

“Well, what is all this about?” he said, somewhat abruptly.

“Ah, do not blame me too quick!” Estelle said, with tears springing to her clear blue eyes.  “Perhaps I am to blame—­perhaps when I see her in such trouble on Saturday night, I should entreat her to tell me why; but I said, ’To-night I will not worry her more; to-morrow morning I will talk to her; we will go for a long walk together?  Nina will tell me all her sorrow.’  Then the morning comes, and she is gone away; what can I do?  Twice I go to your apartment—­”

“Oh, I am not blaming you at all, Miss Girond,” he said, at once and quite gently.  “If anybody is to blame, I suppose it’s myself, for I appear to have quarrelled with Nina without knowing it.  Of course you understood that that packet you left yesterday contained the various little presents I have given her from time to time—­worthless bits of things—­but all the same her sending them back shows that Nina has some ground of offence.  I’m very sorry; if I could only get hold of her I would try to reason with her; but she was always sensitive and proud and impulsive like that.  And then to run away because of some fancied slight—­”

Estelle interrupted him with a little gesture of impatience, almost of despair.

“Ah, you are wrong, you are wrong,” she said.  “It is far more serious than that.  It is no little quarrel.  It is a pain that stabs to the heart—­that kills.  You will see Nina never again to make up a little quarrel.  She has taken her grief away with her.  I myself, when I first saw her troubled at the theatre, I also made a mistake—­I thought she was hysteric—­”