“It is no sacrifice.  It is nothing.  I wish for another life—­but with you—­with you.  Have you one word of hope to give me?”

He saw his answer already.

“I cannot—­I cannot,” she said, with downcast eyes, and obviously in such deep distress that his heart smote him.

“It is enough,” said he.  “I—­I was a fool to deceive myself with such imaginings—­that are far beyond me.  You will forgive me, Miss Honnor; I did not wish to cause you any pain; why, what harm is done except that I have been too presumptuous and too frank—­and you will forget that.  Tell me you forgive me!”

He held out his hand; she took it for a moment; and for another moment he held hers in a firm grasp.

“If I could tell you,” he said, in a low voice, “what I thought of you—­what every one thinks of you—­you might perhaps understand why I have dared to speak.”

She withdrew her hand quickly; her mother was at the door.  When Lady Cunyngham came into the room, her daughter was apparently turning over those photographs and engravings.  Lionel went forward to the elder lady to pay his respects; there was a brief conversation, introduced by Miss Honnor, about Mr. Moore’s generous proposal to sing at any charitable concert they might be interested in; and then, as soon as he could, Lionel said good-bye, left the house, and passed into the outer world—­where the dusk of the December afternoon was coming down over the far wastes of sea.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AN INVOCATION.

All his vague, wild, impracticable hopes and schemes had suddenly received their death-blow; but there was nothing worse than that; he himself (as he imagined) had been dealt no desperate wound.  For one thing, flattered and petted as this young man had been, he was neither unreasoning nor vain; that a woman should have refused to marry him did not seem to him a monstrous thing; she was surely within her right in saying no; while, on the other hand, he was neither going to die of chagrin nor yet to plan a melodramatic revenge.  But the truth was that he had never been passionately in love with Honnor Cunyngham.  Passionate love he did not much believe in; he associated it with lime-light and crowded audiences and the odor of gas.  Indeed, it might almost be said that he had been in love not so much with Honnor Cunyngham as with the condition of life which she represented.  He had grown restless and dissatisfied with his present state; he had been imagining for himself another sort of existence—­but always with her as the central figure of those fancied realms; he had been dreaming dreams—­of which she had invariably formed part.  And now he had been awakened (somewhat abruptly, perhaps, but that may have been his own fault); and there was nothing for it but to summon his common-sense to his aid, and to assure himself that Honnor Cunyngham, at least, was not to blame.