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 contrasted the stupidity of these meetings with the gallantry of his cousin's evenings, and she knew that the difference was not in her. And Don, unable to respond to her little coquetries, because he was clinging to the high solemnity of adoration which he brought to her from his solitary thoughts, felt the estrangement between them and worried over it in a silence that increased her discouragement.

When, at the end of the week, she found herself with a cold which kept her from her lesson, she made no effort to let him know that he would not find her coming home at the usual hour. She told herself that if he wished to break with her, it would serve as an excuse; and if he did not, it would bring him to his senses. With a young girl's cruelty, she was willing to punish affection in order to prove it; and she remained in the house, reading her books and practising her music, and noting with a somewhat guilty satisfaction that it was storming on him out of doors.

Don passed and repassed the gate of the Conservatory a dozen times in the half-hour that he waited for her, wet to the knees with the cold slant of rain that blew under his umbrella, chilled with loitering and downcast with disappointment. He returned to his room, as miserable as if he had missed his dinner, and sat down in his wet clothes, wondering what had happened to her, and unable to get his mind away from the gap which her absence had left in his day. It was not until he had had his supper and shut himself in with his books, that he regained his usual