"Have you been out all the evening?"

She nodded again.

"Take a cab and go home. I'll pay the man."

"No; I can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"I can't," she repeated, and a mulish look of obstinacy came into her face.

Julian guessed the miserable reason.

"Let me—" he began, and in a moment his hand would have been in his pocket. She stopped him.

"I told you as I never would, not from you," she said. "And I wouldn't, all the more since—since that night."

Then, after an instant, she added: