"Don't," she said. "Don't. . . . Please don't. . . . It is no good. I know better than you. . . . I should always be thinking of him. . . . I should never be happy, so neither of us could be happy. There are some things which I cannot do . . . and this is one. It is impossible."
They said nothing more. Richard remained kneeling with his head against her knees and slowly the old peace which she had not known in months took possession of her, heightened now by a new knowledge of her completeness and power. It was a kind of satisfaction which was new to her, an emotion which was heady and intoxicating. She was uplifted, free now of Callendar, free of Clarence, free of everything in all the world . . . alone, liberated, triumphant. She had defeated them all. And when he turned toward her for the last time there was a look in her eyes which said, "Is is no use. You need have no hope. It can never be."
On leaving, he kissed her hand, gently this time as if the passion had gone out of him. All he said was, "I shall do then what they expect of me. Some day you may wish for what you have thrown away. . . . I don't imagine a thing like this happens every day."
He was polite but, like herself, he was unbroken. He appeared to have regained possession of himself, to have become cold and calm and even a trifle indifferent. That was all he said and when he had gone the sight of his back, so slim, so strong, so inscrutable, filled her with a sudden weakness, for she knew that she had closed the door not alone upon Callendar but upon his mother, upon Sabine, upon the big house on Murray Hill, upon all that she had built up with such terrible patience.
He did what was expected of him. In a fortnight there appeared in the newspapers an announcement of the engagement of Richard Callendar to Sabine Cane. It described the great fortune of the prospective bridegroom and enlarged upon the social position of the happy couple. On the same day there was a paragraph
