“This is worse—­it’s idiotic.  I was going to ask you why you hadn’t married.”

With a sharp stab at the heart, Rose noted the past tense.  “Why haven’t you?” she queried, forcing a smile.

“There is only one answer to that question, and yet people keep on asking it.  They might as well ask why you don’t buy an automobile.”

“Well?” continued Rose, inquiringly.

“Because ‘the not impossible she,’ or ‘he,’ hasn’t come, that’s all.”

“Perhaps only one knows,” she suggested.

“No,” replied Allison, “in any true mating, they both know—­they must.”

There was a long pause.  A smouldering log, in the fireplace, broke and fell into the embers.  The dying flame took new life and the warm glow filled the room.

“Is that why people don’t buy automobiles?” queried Rose, chiefly because she did not know what else to say.

“The answer to that is that they do.”

“Sounds as if you might have taken it from Alice in Wonderland,” she commented.  “Maybe they’ve had to give each other up,” she concluded, enigmatically.

“People who will give each other up should be obliged to do it,” he returned.  “May I leave my violin here?  I’ll be coming again so soon.”

“Surely.  I hope you will.”

“Good-night.”  He took her hand for a moment, in his warm, steady clasp, and subtly, Rose answered to the man—­not the violin.  She was deathly white when the door closed, and she trembled all the way up-stairs.

When she saw herself in the mirror, she was startled, for, in her ghostly pallor, her deep eyes burned like stars.  She knew, now.  The woman who had so hungered for Life had suddenly come face to face with its utmost wonder; its highest gift of joy—­or pain.

The heart of a man is divided into many compartments, mostly isolated.  Sometimes there is a door between two of them, or even three may be joined, but usually, each one is complete in itself.  Within the different chambers his soul sojourns as it will, since immeasurably beyond woman, he possesses the power of detachment, of intermittence.

Once in a lifetime, possibly, under the influence of some sweeping passion, all the doors are flung wide and the one beloved woman may enter in.  Yet she is wise, with the wisdom of the Sphinx, if she refuses to go.  Let her say to him:  “Close all these doors, except that which bears my name.  In that chamber and in that alone, we shall dwell together.”  For, with these words, the memories housed in the other chambers crumble to dust and ashes, blown only by vagrant winds of Fate.

In the heart of a woman there are few chambers and still fewer doors.  Instead of business-like compartments, neatly labelled, there are long, labyrinthine passages, all opening into one another and inextricably bound together.  To shut out one, or even part of one, requires the building of a wall, but it takes a long time and the barrier is never firm.