Often during my many visits to that riverside house, so cool and peaceful after the busy turmoil in which fate compelled me to earn my bread, I had spoken of my love for her, and now in my desperation I told her that I could not leave the woman whom I had so long worshipped in the ideal, whom I had instantly recognised as being the embodiment of that ideal, of whose presence I could not endure to be deprived even in thought. She stood silent, with her back to the table, looking into my eyes while I told her these things. A ray of sunlight tipped her auburn hair with gold. Sometimes she would seem to yield to a kind of bliss as she listened to my avowal; to forget all else than ourselves and my words. At others a look of anguish would suddenly cloud her features, and once she shuddered, pressing her hands to her eyes, saying-- "Frank, you must not! Spare me this. I cannot bear it! Indeed I can't." Sometimes, in the days that had passed, when I had spoken of my love, joy and pain would succeed each other on her face; indeed, often they would be present at the same moment. From the look of complete abandonment to happiness that sometimes, though never for long, shone on her features when we had idled up that shady, picturesque backwater, where the kingfishers nested, I felt that she loved me, and that eventually that love would gain the victory. Thus, continually, I tried to elicit an expression of her feelings in words. Sweet to me as was the confession of her looks, I sought also a confession of speech. Alas! however, she seemed determined to give me no single word of encouragement. "But why," I asked, as she stood there with bent head, her hand toying nervously with her rings, "why is it that when I speak of what most occupies my heart you become silent or sorrowful?" She smiled, a strange, artificial smile, and for an instant her clear blue eyes--those eyes which spoke of an absolute purity of soul--met mine, as she replied-- "Can a woman explain her caprice any more than a man can understand it?" Without heeding this evasion I went on-- "Is it that you are already pledged to marry some other man?" "No," she answered, quickly and earnestly. "Then it is because you do not wish me to love you," I observed reproachfully. Her look startled me, for it contained besides a world of grief and pity, something of self-reproach. She regarded me strangely, first as if my words were a welcome truth, then, while her brow darkened, a mental anguish forced itself into her expression. "You were mad to come here to me," she said, with a quick, apprehensive look. "If you knew the truth you would never again cross the threshold of this house." "Why?" I demanded, in an instant alert. "For a reason that is secret," she responded with a shade of sadness.