"I made no mistake! You loved me as much as I loved you.

I know it! By God, do you think a man can't tell when the woman he loves, loves him ?" "Well, you must accept the only alternative then," she answered coolly.
"Sometimes a flame flickers out--and dies." It was as though she had cut him across the face with a whip.

In a sudden madness he caught her in his arms, crushing her slender body against his, and kissed her savagely.
"There!" he cried, a note of fierce triumph ringing in his voice.
"Whether your love is dead or no, I'll not go out of your life with nothing to call my own, and I've made your lips--mine." Loosening his hold of her he stumbled from the room.
Nan remained just where he had left her.

She stood quite motionless for several minutes, almost as though she were waiting for something.

Then with a leap of her breath, half-sigh, half-exultation, the knowledge of what had happened to her crystallised into clear significance.
In one swift, overwhelming moment of illumination she realised that the frail blossom of love which had been tentatively budding in the garden of her heart was dead--withered, starved out of existence ere it had quite believed in its own reality.
Maryon Rooke no longer meant anything to her.