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 consciousness that he was utterly alien, stranger than she had ever imagined until now. She sat down quietly while he drew a chair to her side.

"I've talked to my mother," he said. "Or rather she talked to me. She's told me everything."

Under the gaze of the gray eyes, Ellen turned aside, discomfited, wretched. "I wasn't honest," she murmured. "I'm sorry, but I hadn't meant to be dishonest. I never thought it would make the least difference to any one."

"It has made a difference though . . . a great difference. It's changed everything." He reached over with a tenderness that suddenly weakened her and took one of her hands in his. She knew his hands; she knew them as she had known Clarence's on the night in the Setons' parlor when she had judged him nice enough but a bit of a prig. Callendar's hands were slender, dark and strong, beautifully shaped in a way that made her fear them. When they approached her, she became weak; she felt that she was losing herself. She could not have explained the feeling save by a sense she had of their power. He was talking again, softly in the low voice with the thin trace of an accent, like Lily's.

"I was foolish," he was saying. "I should have known that the thing which made me afraid of you was the thing that would have kept you from taking a lover. I'd never encountered anything quite like it before." He smiled and touched his mustache gently. "I was a fool. I should have known better. I thought perhaps you would love me some time . . . not without a struggle. No, I never expected that. I thought we might understand each other. . . ." For an instant the incredible happened. Callendar was blushing. It was a thing which she had not seen happen before. "I thought that one day we should come together. . . . I thought you were an artist, living as artists I have known do live. I was idiotic. I should have known better. You'll forgive me that . . . won't you?"

For a moment she did not answer. The sound of his soft voice, the touch of the dark hands, had taken possession of her. Dimly