grossness all Sybil's fineness, all her taste, ran up like a wave against a stone sea-jetty, and was broken against it, and the jetty did not know what it had done. She rose, conscious that she was trembling.
' It is a matter of entire indifference to me,' she said, ' when or where or how soon you see her again. I want you to understand that.'
Bilton sat quite unmoved.
' If you were quite certain of yourself, you would not be so violent,' he said. ' You are overstating your feelings; that is because you are rather perplexed as to what they are.'
Sybil turned quickly round to him. She could not help showing her appreciation of this.
' Ah, you are frightfully clever,' she said; ' I do you that justice.'
He rose.
' I shall not give up hope,' he said.
' That is as you please,' she said. ' I have stated as clearly as I can that I can give you none.'
' It is not your fault that you don't convince me,' said he; ' it is the fault of my own determination. Good-bye.'
Sybil shook hands with him.
' What are your movements?' she asked.
' I return to America almost immediately to collect my company for the Coronation Theatre.'
' Ah, you are going to have an American company, then?' she asked.
' Certainly—two companies, rather. I shall have two pieces running simultaneously, with two performances a day. No one has yet thought of producing entertainments to last from about five till eight in the evening.'
When he had gone, she sat down without book, paper, or work, simply to think. Despite herself, and despite the disgust for him which, sown by that moment in Mrs. Emsworth's room, had grown up fungus-like in her mind, this
