The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.

At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, so that her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of the branches.

Selden followed her, and still without speaking they seated themselves on a bench beside the fountain.
Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a child.
"You never speak to me--you think hard things of me," she murmured.
"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.
"Then why do we never see each other?
Why can't we be friends?
You promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as though the words were drawn from her unwillingly.
"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a low voice.
She made no reply, but her face turned to him with the soft motion of a flower.

His own met it slowly, and their lips touched.

She drew back and rose from her seat.