Page:Wired Love (Thayer 1880).djvu/243

236 refuse it. What stands between us is the memory of a love—gone forever."

"What!" exclaimed Jo, astounded in his turn. "You do not mean to say that you—that you—you, the gayest of the gay—that you—" Jo stopped, unable to proceed.

"You hardly expected to find me in the role of the victim of a broken heart, did you?" questioned Cyn, with a half-sad, half-humorous smile. "I admit I do not exactly answer to the average description, and my heart is not broken—there is only a blank in it—something dead that can never live again. Once I loved a man with all my heart"—Jo sighed—"with all the illusion of youth, and he loved me. The difference between his love and mine was, that mine was forever, and his was for a day."

"Impossible!" interrupted Jo. "No man who once loved you could ever change."

"He happened to be one of the kind who could. I never really knew the cause—it might have been another woman. You know there always is another woman."

"Or another man," added Jo gloomily.

"Yes," assented Cyn, and continued. "He was one of the kind, I think now, who are incapable of appreciating a woman's love, and consequently