and setting down a small crystal Buddha on the mantelpiece, watching, half hypnotized, the blur of shadow with its core of soft light rising and falling on the wall behind it; but as Joe touched her the Buddha leaped from her hand and fell to the floor.
"Perhaps you'll change your mind, Evelyn."
She shook her head, sobbing.
"It isn't Levinson, is it? Evelyn, you don't love him?"
"I don't know! I don't know! I thought I did once. I would have been happy with him, but now you've made me so I can't be happy with anyone—with him or with you. I just know I want to go out of your life. I've spoiled it enough."
"You've been my strength and my happiness; you still are; you always will be. You're mine forever, even if you leave me, and I'm yours. Everything we've known together—our secrets, Evelyn! The way we've laughed together, the things we've come through—don't you see how we belong to each other?"
"I want to go."
"You shall go, but you'll come back to me."
"Oh, I don't know, I don't know!"
"You came to me to help you, Evelyn, my Evelyn. I'll remember that forever."
Then as he began to tremble, as tears began to pour over his face, he understood what she had told him. He stumbled to the sofa, putting up his hands to hide
