"It is worth a great deal. It has been worth a great deal to me. But
I must relinquish it."
"Why did you make me care for you?" she demanded, fiercely, again.
"I did not do more than you did. As I said before, we played the game together. It is but the usual way of a flirting man and woman. We should have each been more on guard."
The woman was silent for a little time, and it was evident that she was making an effort at self-control. She succeeded. She had half-turned her back to Harlson, and when she again faced him, she had assumed her dignity.
"You are right, after all," she said. "I did not consider your own character well enough. You tire of things. You will tire of the woman you love now. And you will come back to me, just because I have been less sentimental, and, so, less monotonous than some others. Whether or not I shall receive you time will determine. Is that the way you want me to look at it?"
He bowed. "That is perhaps as good a way as any. It doesn't matter.
Will you shake hands, Ada?"
She reached out her hand listlessly, and he took it. A minute later and he was on the street. And so the last link of one sort with the past was broken. It was long—though he had no concealments from her—before he told Jean of this interview. And then he did not tell the woman's name, nor did she care to know.
CHAPTER XXIV.
AS TO THOSE OTHERS.
Time passes, even with an impatient lover, and so there came an end at last to Grant Harlson's season of probation. There was nothing dramatic about the wedding.