“Yes.”

“Oh!  Then I don’t see how you have changed.”

She laughed, and he too, ruefully.  “You’re cruel.  Not but what I deserve your mockery.  But the change was not from the capacity of making a fool of myself.  I suppose I shall always do that more or less—­unless you help me.  Alma!  Why can’t you have a little compassion?  You know that I must always love you.”

“Nothing makes me doubt that like your saying it, Mr. Beaton.  But now you’ve broken your word—­”

“You are to blame for that.  You knew I couldn’t keep it!”

“Yes, I’m to blame.  I was wrong to let you come—­after that.  And so I forgive you for speaking to me in that way again.  But it’s perfectly impossible and perfectly useless for me to hear you any more on that subject; and so-good-bye!”

She rose, and he perforce with her.  “And do you mean it?” he asked.  “Forever?”

“Forever.  This is truly the last time I will ever see you if I can help it.  Oh, I feel sorry enough for you!” she said, with a glance at his face.  “I do believe you are in earnest.  But it’s too late now.  Don’t let us talk about it any more!  But we shall, if we meet, and so,—­”

“And so good-bye!  Well, I’ve nothing more to say, and I might as well say that.  I think you’ve been very good to me.  It seems to me as if you had been—­shall I say it?—­trying to give me a chance.  Is that so?” She dropped her eyes and did not answer.

“You found it was no use!  Well, I thank you for trying.  It’s curious to think that I once had your trust, your regard, and now I haven’t it.  You don’t mind my remembering that I had?  It’ll be some little consolation, and I believe it will be some help.  I know I can’t retrieve the past now.  It is too late.  It seems too preposterous—­perfectly lurid—­that I could have been going to tell you what a tangle I’d got myself in, and to ask you to help untangle me.  I must choke in the infernal coil, but I’d like to have the sweetness of your pity in it—­whatever it is.”

She put out her hand.  “Whatever it is, I do pity you; I said that.”

“Thank you.”  He kissed the band she gave him and went.

He had gone on some such terms before; was it now for the last time?  She believed it was.  She felt in herself a satiety, a fatigue, in which his good looks, his invented airs and poses, his real trouble, were all alike repulsive.  She did not acquit herself of the wrong of having let him think she might yet have liked him as she once did; but she had been honestly willing to see whether she could.  It had mystified her to find that when they first met in New York, after their summer in St. Barnaby, she cared nothing for him; she had expected to punish him for his neglect, and then fancy him as before, but she did not.  More and more she saw him selfish and mean, weak-willed, narrow-minded, and hard-hearted; and aimless, with all his talent.  She admired his talent in proportion as she learned more of artists, and perceived how uncommon it was; but she said to herself that if she were going to devote herself to art, she would do it at first-hand.  She was perfectly serene and happy in her final rejection of Beaton; he had worn out not only her fancy, but her sympathy, too.