At last he rose and kissed her on the brow and let his hand rest gently on her shoulder—­what a difference between those caresses and the caresses that had made her beg him to be “kind” to her!  Said he: 

“Do you mind if I leave you alone for a while?  I ought to go to the club and have the rest of my things packed and sent.  I’ll not be gone long—­about an hour.”

“Very well,” said she lifelessly.

“I’ll telephone my office that I’ll not be down to-day.”

With an effort she said, “There’s no reason for doing that.  I don’t want to interfere with your business.”

“I’m neglecting nothing.  And that shopping must be done.”

She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height looked down and out upon the mighty spread of the city.  He observed her a moment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.

It was nearly two hours before he got together sufficient courage to return.  He had been hoping—­had been saying to himself with vigorous effort at confidence—­that he had simply seen one more of the many transformations, each of which seemed to present her as a wholly different personality.  When he should see her again, she would have wiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, would appear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent over his senses than ever before.  But a glance as he entered demolished that hope.  She was no different than when he left.  Evidently she had been crying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness.  He did not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said: 

“It’ll not take you long to get ready?”

She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa.  She sank back.  “Perhaps we’d better not go to-day,” suggested she.

“Don’t you feel well?” he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic than it would have been had his sympathy been genuine.

“Not very,” replied she, with a faint deprecating smile.  “And not very—­not very——­”

“Not very what?” he said, in a tone of encouragement.

“Not very happy,” she confessed.  “I’m afraid I’ve made a—­a dreadful mistake.”

[Illustration:  “Evidently she had been crying.”]

He looked at her in silence.  She could have said nothing that would have caused a livelier response within himself.  His cynicism noted the fact that while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinking only of herself.  But he did not blame her.  It was only the familiar habit of the sex, bred of man’s assiduous cultivation of its egotism.  He said:  “Oh, you’ll feel differently about it later.  Let’s get some fresh air and see what the shops have to offer.”

A pause, then she, timidly:  “Would you mind very much if I—­if I didn’t—­go on?”

“You mean, if you left me?”

She nodded without looking at him.  He could not understand himself, but as he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable, a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled up in him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain and filling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away.  And he felt himself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in its solemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his passion had been.