But the spell is broken." It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it really was, and the prospect stretched grey and void before him.

All he could say, however, was: "I hope you'll try before you give up." "If I had known you had ever known him I should have taken for granted he had his candle," she presently answered.

"What's changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he never has had it.

That makes _my_ attitude"-- she paused as thinking how to express it, then said simply--"all wrong." "Come once again," he pleaded.
"Will you give him his candle ?" she asked.
He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because of a doubt of his feeling.

"I can't do that!" he declared at last.
"Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand again.
He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of everything that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover himself as he could only do in solitude.