“You say this is the end. Then you don't love me any more?”
LeGrand Blossom did not answer for a moment.
“You don't—do you?” the woman insisted.
“No,” was the slow reply. “I might as well be brutally frank about it, and say I don't. And you don't care either.”
“Oh, I do! I do!” she eagerly protested.
“No, you only think you do. It is better for both of us to have it end this way. But let us make sure that it is an end. There must be no more of it. I have given you all I can. You must go away as you promised.”
“Yes, I suppose I must,” and her voice was broken. “Oh, I wish I had never met you!”
“Perhaps it would have been better that way,” was Blossom's cold response. “However, it's too late for that now. Good-bye,” he added, as the boat was grating her way along the Loch Harbor slip. “I'm not going to get off. Don't telephone me again. This is all I can ever give you.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose, now you've finished, you can get rid of me. Well, let it be so,” she said bitterly. And then, as the boat bumped to a landing she cried: “If I could only find—”
But the rattle of the chains and the clatter of the wheels on the ferry bridge drowned her voice. She rushed away from LeGrand Blossoms's side and, clutching her shawl close around her as if to make sure of the package the man had given her, she disappeared into the interior of the ferryboat.