"I should like--I should like to beg you to make me a promise that you will never give up your work--your splendid work!" She hesitated, and looked at him almost with supplication.

"But then why should you make such a promise to _me!_" They were sitting opposite one another in the dusty confusion of the room, and when she said this Kendal got up and walked over to her, without knowing exactly why.
"If I made such a promise," he said, looking down at her, "it would be more binding given to you than to anybody else--more binding and more sacred." If she had exacted it he would have promised then and there, and he had some vague notion of sealing the vow with his lips upon her hand, and of arranging--this was more indefinite still--that she should always insist, in her sweet personal way, upon its fulfilment.

But Elfrida felt the intensity in his voice with a kind of fear, not of the situation--she had a nervous delight in the situation--but of herself.

She had a sudden terror in his coming so close to her, in his changed voice, and its sharpness lay in her recognition of it.

Why should she be frightened?
She jumped up gaily with the question still throbbing in her throat.
"No," she cried, "you shall not promise me.