I started as he spoke again, for his voice and manner were both
changed--all the quiver and intensity gone out of them. "The 'reason
why' of a mood is hard to find sometimes, and when found one has a
conviction that no one but one's self would see its reasonableness,"
he said with a laugh cold and musical. "Let us talk of something we
can both be sure to understand."

He seemed far away again. For a moment he had seemed so near--nearer,
I think, than I ever remember to have felt a man to be. Then he
talked, and talked very well, and made me talk, though it was not as
easy as it usually is to me, and though we spoke of things that are
generally to me like the sound of a trumpet to the war-horse. My
spirit did not rise: the words would hardly come. I wanted to be alone
and think it over--think over his words, his manner, his voice, the
look in his eyes, and see what they meant, and, if I could, why he had
changed so suddenly to me.

When we had walked some distance farther he himself proposed turning
back, and took me home. As we neared the hotel I could not resist
asking him why he had not come home with me that night in the carriage
instead of walking, or running rather, beside it.

Such a strange look came over his face as I asked him, and his
lips set with a stern expression as he said stiffly, icily, "I had
realized, Miss Linton, how utterly different our ways of looking at
life must be; or else perhaps it is that you do not hold me to be
enough of a knight to consider a woman's position before my own
comfort and pleasure."

"I don't understand you," said I, bewildered. "I _asked_ you to get