"
* * * * *
She was to start for Florida at ten the next morning. Mrs. Carnarvon was
going away to the opera, giving them the last evening alone. Marian had
asked this of her point-blank.
"You are an extraordinarily sensible as well as strong-willed girl,
Marian," Mrs. Carnarvon replied.
"I can't find it in my heart to blame you for what you're doing. The fact
that I haven't even hinted a protest, but have lent myself to your little
plots, shows that that young man has hypnotized me also."
"You needn't disturb yourself, as you know," Marian said gaily. "I'm not
hypnotized. I shall not see Mr. Howard again until--after it's all over.
Perhaps not then."
He came to dinner and they were not alone until almost nine. She sat near
the open fire among the cushions heaped high upon the little sofa. She had
never been more beautiful, and apparently never in a happier mood. They
both laughed and talked as if it were the first instead of the last day of
their month. Neither spoke of the parting; each avoided all subjects that
pointed in direction of the one subject of which both thought whenever
their minds left the immediate present. As the little clock on the mantle
began to intimate in a faint, polite voice the quarter before eleven, he
said abruptly, almost brusquely:
"I feel like a coward, giving you up in this way.
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