"No! But because you possessed it," Kate insisted. "Because you were certain you possessed it; and so you were content to let things lie. Now, however, everything was changing. I was escaping you; and you made me come here at night, across that horrible lonely pass, just to assert your mastery over me--just to convince yourself it was real. Don't you see? I dare not go back and leave those letters with you." Hawke wavered. If he gave her what she wished, she would escape him, as she had said. She would pass clean beyond his reach. She would have no fear of him--no strong feeling of any kind. "Suppose that I give you your way," he said, hesitatingly; "what is going to happen between you and me?" The unexpected question scared the girl, and she answered, catching her breath-- "Everything was over between us--ages ago, it seems to me. You have not seen me for a year. You said so yourself." "Yes! I know," he replied, slowly, and Kate felt that he was watching her keenly. "But now that I do see you again, it is like meeting you for the first time without the trouble of having to make friends." Kate half rose to her feet, with a slight cry. "Don't get up!" Hawke exclaimed, and he smoothed her hair caressingly with his hand. "You look so pretty like that." She clenched her nails in her palms. Her whole nature rose against the man. The mere touch of his fingers turned her sick. At last, however, she forced herself to meet his gaze. She saw that he was going to speak, and began first, coaxing him, while a deadly humiliation set her cheeks ablaze. "Friends? Yes! We might be friends. Only give me the letters, and I will think of you as a friend!" "For just so long as it takes you to reach Keswick." "No; always," she said simply. "You don't know what a woman can forgive when once she has felt as I have felt towards you." There was a pause. Hawke suddenly stripped the letters off the file. "I will give them to you," he said. Kate held out her hands to him eagerly, with a low cry of joy. But Hawke dropped the packet on the table, and seized her outstretched wrists. "But they have their price," he whispered, bending over her. Kate shrank away in a whirl of terror. But his grasp only tightened, and he drew her towards him, laughing. "Only a kiss," he said. "One kiss for each." "No!" She almost shouted the word. "Hush!" he laughed. "You will rouse the house. One kiss for each," and he laughed again almost hysterically. "It is not a heavy price--it is not even a new price. You have paid it before with nothing to buy. Think of the distance you have come, of the horrible lonely pass!"