did. It wasn't a face made for tragedy; it had strayed into it by

mistake.

"This some one you love," he said gently, "will it not hurt them terribly? Have you thought of that?"

He saw the tears come. They rolled slowly down her cheeks. She faintly whispered:

"He doesn't love me."

Haldicott could feel no amusement now, the pity was too great. He put his other hand on the hand he held.

"Used he to love you?" he asked.

"No," said Allida; "he never loved me."

For a moment Haldicott struggled with a half-nervous wish to laugh; relief was in the wish.

"And he knows that you love him?" he controlled his voice to ask.

"He will--when he gets my letter."

"Poor devil!" ejaculated Haldicott.

"Oh, you don't understand!" cried Allida. She opened her eyes and sat upright, drawing her hand from his. "How could you understand? You think it's a sort of vengeance I'm taking--for his not loving me. I can't drag myself through explanations, indeed I can't. Of course I see that my tragedy to you must be almost farce. I must go. Why should I have told you anything? I am desecrating it all, making it all grotesque, by being still alive."

"No, no; you mustn't go yet," said Haldicott, seizing her hand firmly, yet with not too obvious a restraint. "You mustn't go, not at peace with me. You have all the evening still before you,--it's not six yet,--and it doesn't take long to kill one's self with poison. Trust me. You must trust me. Don't think about its being grotesque; most things are in certain aspects. I think that we are both behaving very naturally, considering the circumstances. The circumstances, I grant you, are a little grotesque--not the circumstance of your being still alive, but of your wishing to die. But, indeed, I shall understand, you poor child, poor sweet child, if you will explain."

Again the mirage sense of compulsion, of peace in yielding to it, of letting this ghost-like consciousness shut out the long past and the short future, crept over her. She sank back again beside him.

"But how can I explain? Where shall I begin?"

"Listen to me now, dear Allida--we can use Christian names, I think, in a case of last dying confession like this. I am not going to prevent you, or put any constraint upon you; but I want you to explain as clearly and fully as you can, so that, in trying to make me see, you may see yourself, clearly and fully, what you are doing, where you are. Probably you are in a condition of absolutely irrational despair. Let us look at it together. I may be able to show you something else. Begin with him. Who is he?"

Allida had leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She dropped her face into her hands as she answered:

"Oliver Ainslie."

"Yes; I know him."

"Yes; you know him."

"He is--a charming fellow," said Haldicott.

"I met him over a year ago," said Allida. "I am very miserable at home. I have grown up alone. My mother and I have never been at all sympathetic. I hardly saw her when I was growing up. She only wanted to marry me off as soon as possible, and--she hasn't found it easy to marry me off. I haven't money--or looks in particular--oh, but I can't go into all that! You know mamma. I have hated my life with her."

"Yes, yes. I understand."

"Not that there is any harm in mamma," Allida amended, with a weary exactitude; "everybody understands that, too. Only she is so utterly silly, so utterly selfish. This all sounds horrible."

"I understand."

"I met him. I had never seen any one so dear, so sympathetic. I seemed to breathe with happiness when he was there. It was like morning sunlight after a hot, glaring ballroom, being with him. He never cared one bit for me; but--the first time I saw him he smiled at me, and he was kind and dear to me,--as he would be to any one,--and from that first moment I loved him--oh, loved him!"

She paused, a sacred sweetness in the pause.

Haldicott, sitting beside her in the fog, felt the presence of something radiant and snowy.

"And I sometimes thought and hoped--that he would care for me. I wrote to him all the time, letters I never sent; but I wrote as if he were to see them--some day. It's almost strange to me to think that such love didn't bring him to me by its very force and yearning. One hears, you know, of thoughts making themselves felt--becoming realities. I wonder where all those thoughts of mine went!"

He saw them all--those white, innocent thoughts--flying out like birds, like a flock of white birds, and disappearing in the darkness. How could a soul not have felt them fluttering about it, crying vainly for admittance? He almost shared Allida's wonder.

"And to-day, I sent all the letters with the last one telling of my death. For--I saw it this morning--he is engaged. So I couldn't go on. I could never love any one else; I shouldn't want to. My heart broke when I read the paper; really it broke. And I explained it all to him, so that it could not hurt him, that I was dying because life had become worthless to me--and yet that there was joy in dying because I could, in dying, tell him. There had been beauty and joy in loving him; he must not be too sorry; and he must care for my love. It was a gift--a gift that I could give him only in going away for ever myself."

She was silent. The evening was late by now, and the fog about them shut them into a little space, a little island just large enough for their bench, a bit of path, a dim border of railing opposite, and a branch of tree overhead. The muffled sound of cautious traffic was far away. They were wonderfully alone.

Haldicott took one of the hands on which she leaned, and raised it to his lips.

"Sweet, foolish child!" he said.

She turned her head and looked at him; it was almost as if she saw him for the first time--the man, not only Life's personification. They could still see quite clearly each other's faces, and for a long time, gravely, they looked into each other's eyes.

"Don't you see that it's all a dream?" said Haldicott.

"A dream?" Allida repeated. "The reality of a whole year?"

And yet it was a dream to her; even while she had told him of that year it was as if she told of something far behind her, lived through long, long ages ago, in another, a different life.

But she struggled to hold the vanishing pain and beauty of it all--the reality that, unreal, would make her whole being seem like a little handful of thin cloud dying away into emptiness.

"This is a dream," she said, still looking at him, "_this, this_. What am I doing here?" She rose to her feet, gasping now. "Oh! he will get the letter--and I shall not be dead! I must go at once--at once!"

"To save yourself from being ridiculous? You are going to kill yourself so as to keep a tragic attitude that you've taken before this man who doesn't care for you--an attitude that's really disarranged? Dear--pitiful--enchanting little idiot!" said Haldicott.

He had risen too, and, holding her hands, he still, but not too obviously, kept her near him.

His words were almost cruel in their lightness; his voice had a feeling that, more than any words, any supplication or remonstrance, made her past life seem illusory, and she herself, with it, disappearing into pure nothingness. The world rocked with her. Only the feeling in that voice seemed real.

"Are you sure, are you sure," he said, "that you can never love anybody else? Won't you wait a year to find out? Won't you wait a month? Allida, won't you wait a day?"

"Why do you try to humiliate me?" she gasped, and the tears fell down her face. He almost feared that he had been brutal, that she was going to faint.

"I am not trying to humiliate you. I am trying to wake you. Perhaps the truth will wake you. Will you wait a day, an hour, Allida, and see?"

"See what?"

"That this is a dream; that you wove it out of nothing to fill the emptiness of your sad life; that it would have gathered round the first 'dear sympathetic' person who smiled at you. And after you see that, will you wait and see----" he paused.

"What?" she repeated.

"How much I can make you love me," said Haldicott.

"Why do you mock me?" Allida said. "Why, unless you think me mad?"

"Well, of course you _are_ mad, in a sense; any coroner's inquest would say so. But _mock_ you! I love you, Allida."

Her face had now as wild, as frozen a look on it as the one he had seen, not three hours before, after she had slipped the letter into the pillar-box; but it was with another wildness--of wonder rather than of despair.

"But how can you?" she faltered.

"I can tell you how, but you must wait an hour--more than an hour--to hear. You will wait--Allida?"

"It is pity, to save me."

"To save you? Why, I'd hand you over to the nearest policeman if I only wanted to save you. I _do_ want to save you--for myself."

There drifted through her mind a vision of her little room, where, by this time, she might have been lying on the bed, the empty bottle of poison near her. And that vision of death was now far away, across an abyss, and she was in life, and life held her, claimed her.

"But I can't understand. How is it possible?" She closed her eyes. "My letter," she whispered.

Haldicott put his arm around her and led her down the path.

"Ainslie is a dear fellow," he said. "We will write him another letter as soon as we get in."

She was hardly aware of the walk back to the little house in Mayfair, back to the doorstep where, such aeons ago, she had paused to look at the crying cat. If she had not paused, if she had gone a little earlier to the pillar-box, before the lamp was lighted----Her mind was blurred again. All--all was dream, except that life, near her, was claiming her.

Now they were in the drawing-room, among the shaded lamps, the gilt, the chintz and bric-a-brac.

Haldicott sent for wine and made her drink. He said to the maid that Miss Fraser had felt faint during her walk. For a long time Allida leaned back in the chair where he had put her, shading her eyes with her hand.

"Can you write to Ainslie now?" Haldicott asked at last. "We will send your letter by special messenger."

"Yes, yes; let me write." She drew off her gloves, and Haldicott put paper and pen before her.

She looked up at him.

"What shall I say?" she asked.

This time, uncontrollably, he wanted to laugh; if he did not laugh he must burst out crying; he leaned his elbows on the table as he sat beside her, burying his face on his arms, his shoulders shaking.

Allida sat with the pen in her hand, gazing at him. The nightmare, after all, was too near for her to share his dubious amusement; but that she saw its point as well as he did was evinced in her next question, asked in still the faltering voice:

"Shall I say that I've decided to wait a day?"

Haldicott looked up.

"Thank Heaven, you _have_ a sense of humour. It was my one anxiety about you--all through. Say, dearest Allida, that you are awake."

She looked at him, and now, though she did not smile, her wan face was touched by a pale, responsive radiance.

"It is so strange--to be awake," she murmured, bending to her paper.

But hardly had the first slow line been written when running steps were heard outside, the door was flung open before the amazed maid could reach it, and Oliver Ainslie, white and distraught, darted into the room.

* * * * *

He did not glance at Haldicott. The distraction of his look had only time to break into stupefied thanksgiving before the same rush that had brought him in carried him to Allida. He fell on his knees before her. Clasping her round the waist, he hid his face, crying, "Thank God!"

Allida sat, still holding her pen. She did not look at Ainslie, but across the room at Haldicott, and again, before her look, as of one confronted with her own utter inadequacy to deal with the situation, Haldicott could almost have laughed. But the moment for light interpretations had gone. Anything amusing in the present situation was only grimly so for him. The fairy prince had turned up--a real fairy prince, for a wonder, and three hours of everyday reality had no chance of counting against a year of fairy-tale with such a lasting chapter. After all, it was very beautiful; he was able to see that, thank goodness! Yet Allida's perfectly blank look held him. She was evidently unable to deal single-handed with her dilemma--to explain to her fairy prince why he found her alive rather than dead. Haldicott turned to the mantelpiece and moved, unseeingly, the idiotic silver ornaments upon it, waiting for an opportunity to strike a blow for her deliverance.

Ainslie had lifted his face to hers.

"It was a mistake, that announcement: it's my cousin who is to be married; we have the same name. Oh, Allida! darling Allida! if I had not come in time! That I should have found you--_you_! And only just in time!"

He became now, perhaps from the blankness of her face, aware more fully of Haldicott's unobtrusive presence.

To the silent query of his eyes she answered:

"He knows--everything."

"He prevented you! He met you and prevented you! I see it all. Haldicott, it _is_ you, isn't it----"

Haldicott reluctantly turned to him.

"My dear fellow, can I ever thank you enough? My dear Haldicott, it's all too astonishing. You know? And _why_ she was going to? The poor, darling child!" He had risen, and, with his arm around Allida's shoulders, was gazing at her.

"I saw Miss Fraser posting her letter to you, and guessed from her expression that something very bad was up," said Haldicott. "I forced her to walk a little with me, and I made her tell me the story; and then I made her see that the truer love for you would be shown in living. She had just recognised that,"--Haldicott smiled at her,--"and she was going to write, and see if she couldn't waylay that letter--spare you the pain of it and, at all events, tell you that she wasn't going to burden you with unfair remorse for the rest of your days. That's about the truth of it all, isn't it?" And he so believed it to be, now, the only essential truth, or, at least, the half-truth that she had better believe in, that his smile had not a touch of bitterness.

Allida still held her pen and still gazed at him.

"Ah! thank God for it all--for the fact that the letter wasn't waylaid, and for the fact that you _were_, Allida! When I think of it--that gift coming to me--your gift, Allida--and not too late--not too late!"

The young man, in his rapturous thankfulness, indifferent to the guardian presence, raised her hand to his lips, kissing it with a fervour where tears struggled with smiles.

"I'll go now," Haldicott said gently. "I'm so--immensely glad for you both."

But Allida, at this, started from her helpless apathy.

"No, no! Don't--don't go!" she cried. "I can't think. It's all so impossible. Do you mean," and her eyes now went to Ainslie while she drew her hand from his--"do you mean that you love me?"

"Love you, darling Allida? Don't you see it?"

"Because you got the letter," Allida said, as if linking in her mind a chain of evidence. "If you hadn't got it--you would not love me now."

"Forgive me, dearest, for my blindness! I should not have known you if I had not got it."

Allida still looked at him.

"You are just as dear--even dearer than I thought you; you are even more worthy of any love than I dreamed," she said. Her face had lost all apathy, all helplessness. It was with the stricken resolution that it could so strangely show that she pushed back her chair and rose, moving away from the young man, who, enchantingly a fairy prince, gazed at her with adoring eyes.

"It was written in a dream," said Allida, clasping her hands and returning his gaze. "It was written in a dream," she repeated. "It was all--all the whole year--a dream--only a dream."

The trust of his gaze was too deep for understanding to sink through it.

"I am awake now," said Allida; "you are dearer than I ever dreamed, but I am awake."

"When reality comes, the past always seems rather dream-like," Ainslie said. He felt and understood as well, as truly as the other had done. "Darling Allida, I can never be worthy of such a love as yours, but I will try. And now that you are awake, you will find how much better waking is than any dream."

She gasped at this, and retreated before him.

"But I am horrid; I am unbelievable. There isn't any reality. There isn't any love to be worthy of," she cried, and covered her face with her hands.

Ainslie, from her attitude of avowal and abasement, looked his stupefaction at Haldicott, and, for all answer, got a stupefaction as complete.

"What _does_ she mean?" the younger man at length inquired.

"I don't think she knows what she means," Haldicott answered. "I think she is, naturally, overwrought. All feeling, all meaning, is paralyzed. She probably won't mean anything worth listening to for a good while."

They were speaking quite as if Allida, standing there with her hidden face, were a lunatic, the diagnosis of whose harmless case was as yet impossible in the absence of fresh symptoms. But a symptom was forthcoming.

"I mean _that_," she said. "I don't understand. I can't explain. It's as if something were broken in me. There isn't any love; there never will be. If you can ever forgive me, please tell me so--when you do. It mustn't be more than a dream for you, too--a dream only an hour long."

The two men again exchanged glances, but now with more hesitation.

"But, Allida,"--Ainslie spoke with gentle pain--"I love you. I am not dreaming. Do you mean to say that you can't love me? Do you mean to say that if I had loved you, with no letter to awaken me, you would have thought your love a dream, merely because it was answered?"

"It isn't that. I can't explain. Something broke. You came too late. It's as if I had died--and become almost another person. I know it's unbelievable; I don't understand it myself; but it is true. It is all over, really."

"All over?" dazedly Ainslie repeated. "But why? After those letters? After what you were going to do? Allida!"

She dropped her hands, and once more her eyes went to Haldicott in that look--the appeal of incompetence. But there was more in it: suffering and shame, and a strength that strove to hide them from him.

"Perhaps, my dear Ainslie, you had better go," said Haldicott, "for the present at least." But, in its wonder, his answering look now appealed and was helpless in its incomprehension.

Ainslie stared at her.

"Good-bye," he said at last.

"Oh, good-bye," said Allida, with a fervor of relief that all her humility and pity could not dissemble.

"Good-bye," he repeated, holding her hand, "sweet, strange, cruel Allida."

She put her hand over his and looked clearly at him.

"Remember," she said--"remember how absurd I am."

He was gone. Allida did not turn to Haldicott. She remained looking at the door that had closed on the exit of her "best beloved."

"But _why_?" said Haldicott. He repeated Ainslie's broken words almost faintly. "When the dream came true--why didn't you take it?"

She made no reply.

"I never meant that because it had been a dream it couldn't become a reality," he went on.

She looked vaguely round the room. Indeed, things swam to her; the nearest support was the mantelpiece. She leaned against it, looking down.

"It's not anything I said--in my efforts to shake you awake? You _were_ in love with him, you know. Weren't you in love with him, Allida?"

"Yes; I suppose so. How can I tell you anything? All I know is that I was dreaming."

"But--why did the dream go?"

"You killed it, perhaps," she said in a colourless voice, leaning her forehead upon her hand, and still looking fixedly down.

"I--_I_ killed it? You mean--that any one who had come then--would have stopped you--made you see your own folly--waked you?"

"They might have stopped me--they might have saved me," she said, and she paused.

"But only I could wake you? Only I could prevent the coming true of your dream?" Again in his wondering, groping voice was the feeling that, like a torch, had led her up from Tartarus--up through blackness to the sweet air again.

She still hid her eyes, not daring to look or trust.

"Allida!" he supplicated.

"Oh," she said in a voice so low that it did not shake--it was as if she just dared to let it sound at all--"was your dream true, or was it only the rope you threw out to me to drag me on shore with?"

Haldicott stretched out his hand to her.

"Do you mean that my three hours of reality count for more than his--than his, backed by your whole year of dreaming? Allida, are you really absurd enough to say that I count for more than Oliver Ainslie?"

She put her weary, ashamed head down on the arm that leaned upon the mantelpiece. She did not take his hand.

"What can I say? Everything I say seems unbelievable. Can anything I say be more absurd than anything else? Yes, you do count for more. You count for everything. Did I love him--or did I only love love? I don't know. I only know that what you said--and are--made it all a dream. And now you will think that I am going to kill myself because _you_ don't love me! But my absurdity is over, I promise you. Really, I am awake."

"Allida, darling," said Haldicott--he went to her and took both her hands, so that she must raise her head and look at him--"if I've made fun of you when I was feeling horribly frightened, and called you ridiculous when I found you as tragic and adorable as you were grotesque, _that_ was the rope. Now I will take an hour, or a day, or a whole week, if necessary, to make you believe it; but _I_ could have committed suicide--I assure you I could--when I saw Oliver Ainslie come into the room."

A FORSAKEN TEMPLE