"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.