neither disappointment nor reproach. Her pose was easy, and she seemed to give effect to a mood of quiet speculation by the spinning of her ruby ring upon the polished table. Denham forgot his despair in wondering what thoughts now occupied her.
“You don’t believe me?” he said. His tone was humble, and made her smile at him.
“As far as I understand you—but what should you advise me to do with this ring?” she asked, holding it out.
“I should advise you to let me keep it for you,” he replied, in the same tone of half-humorous gravity.
“After what you’ve said, I can hardly trust you—unless you'll unsay what you’ve said?”
“Very well. I’m not in love with you.”
“But I think you are in love with me. . . . As I am with you,” she added casually enough. “At least,” she said, slipping her ring back to its old position, “what other word describes the state we’re in?”
She looked at him gravely and inquiringly, as if in search of help.
“It’s when I’m with you that I doubt it, not when I’m alone,” he stated.
“So I thought,” she replied.
In order to explain to her his state of mind, Ralph recounted his experience with the photograph, the letter, and the flower picked at Kew. She listened very seriously.
“And then you went raving about the streets,” she mused. “Well, it’s bad enough. But my state is worse than yours, because it hasn’t anything to do with facts. It’s an hallucination, pure and simple—an intoxication . . .One can be in love with pure reason?” she hazarded. “Because if you’re in love with a vision, I believe that that’s what I’m in love with.”
This conclusion seemed fantastic and profoundly unsatisfactory to Ralph, but after the astonishing varia-
