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 loving. I can't love any one—I have tried. I have no love to give, and I am not worth loving. Believe me; do believe me."

"Are you being fair to yourself—or me—now?"

"Believe me!" she repeated.

"I believe in you always," he said, quietly. "If faith could understand, it wouldn't be faith."

"If I loved you, how much I would love you for saying that!" She saw she had said too much and hastened to atone for it. "That really explains my feeling for you from the beginning. I always wanted to love you and—couldn't. That is why I think it will be so much happier, for both of us, never to see each other again. Your life is full of many things—first of all, your work. Love that, it will repay you better than loving me. As for my life, that will pass pleasantly enough. I have got what I always wanted—money. I would have loved you, only I loved money more. It was my first love, and I have been faithful to it. That should be a redeeming quality, shouldn't it? You can say I have been faithful to one love. That can't be said of every woman." She rose from her chair, and as she stood by him brushed a short golden hair from his coat sleeve. She held it up to the light and it curled round her finger.

"That belongs to your child," she said, "not to Grace. I call that a rather pretty omen." The clock struck seven. "In an hour's time," she said, "Aunt Theodosia and I shall be starting for Dover. Agatha was quite right. I shall find it gayer abroad. Good-bye, and—Godfrey—believe me, but don't hate me."