Once he had broached the subject of marriage,--soon after her return to town,--but she had made it quite clear that this was a forbidden topic.

The good comradeship ship and frankness of their intercourse had passed, and it seemed to his despairing lover's heart that it could never be regained.

She carried her head a little higher; her smile was not the smile of old.

He shrank from telling her that nothing mattered if she cared for him as he believed she did.

She gave him no chance, for one thing, and he had never in his bitter self-communing found any words in which to tell her so.