Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/147

 wretched loneliness, of still more wretched hopes and fears, were in vain. She heard Pembroke saying:

"You had best let me see you home. It is too late for you to be out alone."

"You will not," she replied. "I will not permit you, after what you have said, to go one step with me."

Pembroke felt thoroughly ashamed. It was one of the incidents of his association with Madame Koller and Ahlberg that they always made him say and do things he was ashamed of. In short, they demoralized him. He had been betrayed by temper and by circumstances into things that were utterly against his self-respect—like this ebullition of rage against a woman. In the plenitude of his remorse he was humble to the last degree.

"May I," he asked—"may I, at least accompany you to your own grounds? It is really not safe for you."

Madame Koller turned upon him and stamped her foot.

"No, no—always no. Do you think there is any danger on earth from which I would accept your protection? Go to Olivia Berkeley. She would marry you in your poverty if it suited her whim, and be a millstone around your neck. Go to her, I say."

Pembroke watched her figure disappearing in the dusk along the faint white line of the road. He