be shortened, but it must not be lengthened by so much as a day.
Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and pack my trunks."

He shuddered; her voice penetrated him to the quick.

Drawing herself up, she looked down on him with a strange mixture
of passion and elation.

"You need fear no indiscretion on my part, so long as our
armistice lasts," said she. "No one can drag the truth from me
while any hope remains of your doing your duty by me in the way I
have suggested."

And still he did not move.

"Frederick?"

Was it her voice that was thus murmuring his name? Can the tiger
snarl one moment and fawn the next?

"Frederick, I have a final word to say--a last farewell. Up to
this hour I have endured your attentions, or, let us say, accepted
them, for I always found you handsome and agreeable, if not the
master of my heart. But now it is love that I feel, love; and love
with me is no fancy, but a passion--do you hear?--a passion which
will make life a heaven or hell for the man who has inspired it.
You should have thought of this when you opposed me."

And with a look in which love and hatred contended for mastery,
she bent and imprinted a kiss upon his forehead. Next moment she