I moved on my way, the only way my feet could tread.

But she darted after me, and laid her hand on my arm.

I looked at her in amazed questioning.
"You'll come again, Simon, when-- ?" The smile would not be denied though it came timidly, afraid for its welcome and distrustful of its right.
"When you're better, Simon ?" I longed--with all my heart I longed--to be kind to her.

How could the thing be to her what it was to me?
She could not understand why I was aghast; extravagant despair, all in the style of a vanquished rival, would have been easy for her to meet, to ridicule, to comfort.

I knew all this, but I could not find the means to affect it or to cover my own distress.
"You'll come again then ?" she insisted pleadingly.
"No," said I, bluntly, and cruelly with unwilling cruelty.
At that a sudden gust of passion seized her and she turned on me, denouncing me fiercely, in terms she took no care to measure, for a prudish virtue that for good or evil was not mine, and for a narrowness of which my reason was not guilty.