The next morning at the breakfast-table he looked haggard and pale.  He could eat nothing.  Doctor Gordon looked at him keenly.

“What is the matter, Elliot?” he asked.

Clemency gave a quick glance at him, and her face worked.

“Nothing,” replied James.

“You look downright ill.”

“I am not ill.”

Clemency rose abruptly and left the table.

“What is the matter, Clemency?  Where are you going?” Gordon called out.

“I have finished my breakfast,” the girl replied in a stifled voice.

Gordon insisted on making some calls that morning, and relieving James.  “You are worn out, my son,” he said in a voice of real affection, and clapped him on the shoulder.  He sent James on a short round in spite of his objections, and the consequence was that James reached home half an hour before luncheon.

It was a beautiful morning.  Spring seemed to have come with a winged leap.  A faint down of green shaded the elms, and there was a pink cloud of peach bloom in the distance.  The cherry trees were swollen almost to blossom, and the apple trees had pale radiances in the glance of the sun.  The grass was quite green, and here and there were dandelions.  Clemency was out in the yard, working in a little flower-garden, as James drove in.  She had on a black dress, and her fair head was uncovered.  She pretended not to see James, but he had hardly entered the office before she came in.  Her face was all suffused with pink.  She looked at him tenderly and angrily.

“Are you ill?” she said, in an indignant voice which had, in spite of herself, soft cadences.

“No, Clemency.”

“Then why do you look so?” she demanded.

James turned at that.  “Clemency, you accuse me of cruelty,” he said, “but you yourself are cruel.  You do not realize that you cannot tell a man he is a murderer, and throw him over when he loves you, and yet have him utterly unmoved by it.”

Suddenly Clemency was in his arms.  “I love you, I love you,” she sobbed.  “Don’t be unhappy, don’t look so.  It breaks my heart.  I love you, I do love you, dear.  I can’t marry you, but I love you!”

“If you love me, you can marry me.”

Clemency shrank away, then she clung to him again.  “No,” she said, “I can’t get over the thought of it.  I can’t help it, but I do love you.  We will go on just the same as ever, only we will not get married.  You know we were not going to get married just yet anyway.  I love you.  We will go on just the same.  Only don’t look the way you did this morning at breakfast.”

“How did I look?”

“As if your heart were broken.”

“So it is, dear.”

“No, it is not.  I love you, I tell you.  What is the need of bothering about marriage anyway?  I am perfectly happy being engaged.  Annie says she is never going to get married.  Let the marriage alone.  Only you won’t look so any more, will you, dear?”