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“Oh, it’s not late. They’ll be at it for hours in there–yet.”

She made a faint inarticulate sound. She wanted to say: “No–Robert’s speech was to be the last–” but she could not bring herself to pronounce Ransom’s name, and at the moment no other way of refuting her companion’s statement occurred to her.

The young man leaned back luxuriously, reassured by her silence.

“You see it’s my last chance–and I want to make the most of it.”

“Your last chance?” How stupid of her to repeat his words on that cooing note of interrogation! It was just such a lead as the Brant girl might have given him.

“To be with you–like this. I haven’t had so many. And there’s less than a week left.”

She attempted to laugh. “Perhaps it will sound longer if you call it five days.”

The flatness of that, again! And she knew there were people who called her intelligent. Fortunately he did not seem to notice it; but her laugh continued to sound in her own ears–the coquettish chirp of middle age! She decided that if he spoke again–if he said anything–she would make no farther effort at evasion: she would take it directly, seriously, frankly–she would not be doubly disloyal.

“Besides,” he continued, throwing his arm along the back of the bench, and turning toward her so that his face was like a dusky bas-relief with a silver rim–“besides, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

The sound of the river seemed to cease altogether: the whole world became silent.

Margaret had trusted her inspiration farther than it appeared likely to carry her. Again she could think of nothing happier than to repeat, on the same witless note of interrogation: “To tell me?”

“You only.”

The constraint, the difficulty, seemed to be on his side now: she divined it by the renewed shifting of his attitude–he was capable, usually, of such fine intervals of immobility–and by a confusion in his utterance that set her own voice throbbing in her throat.

“You’ve been so perfect to me,” he began again. “It’s not my fault if you’ve made me feel that you would understand everything–make allowances for everything–see just how a man may have held out, and fought against a thing–as long as he had the strength. . . . This may be my only chance; and I can’t go away without telling you.”

He had turned from her now, and was staring at the river, so that his profile was projected against the moonlight in all its beautiful young dejection.

There was a slight pause, as though he waited for her to speak; then she leaned forward and laid her hand on his.

“If I have really been–if I have done for you even the least part of what you say . . . what you imagine . . . will you do for me, now, just one thing in return?”

He sat motionless, as if fearing to frighten away the shy touch on his hand, and she left it there, conscious of her gesture only as part of the high ritual of their farewell.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked in a low tone.

“Not to tell me!” she breathed on a deep note of entreaty.

“Not to tell you–?”

“Anything–anything–just to leave our . . . our friendship . . . as it has been–as–as a painter, if a friend asked him, might leave a picture–not quite finished, perhaps . . . but all the more exquisite. . . .”

She felt the hand under hers slip away, recover itself, and seek her own, which had flashed out of reach in the same instant–felt the start that swept him round on her as if he had been caught and turned about by the shoulders.

“You–you–?” he stammered, in a strange voice full of fear and tenderness; but she held fast, so centred in her inexorable resolve that she was hardly conscious of the effect her words might be producing.