"Only if you were tired," she said rather lamely, and then again with that new anxiety, "Old Mr. Daman said to someone before me, 'James Berwick's looking rather fagged to-night'----" "Let us talk of you, not of me," he said rather hastily. Heavens! what might she not have heard during this evening concerning him and his affairs? He lowered for a moment the window to his right and looked out into the starless moonless night, or rather early morning. "We are now on the brow of Whiteways. I wish it were daylight, for then you would see the finest view in Sussex." "But I have seen the view. I was at the meet, and thanks to your kindness, for I rode Saucebox. Mr. Berwick, I do not think I have ever thanked you sufficiently for Saucebox!" He turned to her with a quick movement. "I do not think there should ever be a question of thanks between you and me. We are--at least I hope so--too good friends for that." And with a certain gravity he added, "Do you not believe friendship possible between a man and woman?" He waited a moment, then hurried on, "Listen! I offer you my friendship; I have never done so, in the sense I do now, to any other woman. Shall I tell you who has been my best, indeed my only, woman friend? only my sister, only Arabella. I owe her more than one debt of very sincere gratitude. You will not grudge her place in my--" again he hesitated,--"in my heart." Barbara smiled tremulously. What a strange question to ask her! She felt a little afraid of Miss Berwick, and yet how friendly and gracious had been her manner to-night. "Tell me," he said urgently, "you do not mind my saying this to you? I only wish to seal an existent compact. Ever since we met, have we not been close friends, you and I? I take it we are both singularly placed," he bent down and tried to look into her downcast eyes, "I am very solitary, and you have only Madame Sampiero--is not that so?" Barbara bent her head. She felt that Berwick's low, ardent voice was slowly opening the gates of paradise, and drawing her through into that enchanted garden where every longing of the heart may be safely and innocently satisfied. The carriage was going slowly down the steep hill leading from Whiteways to Chillingworth, and Berwick knew that he would soon have to leave her. His voice dropped to a lower key--he ventured, for a moment, to take her ringless left hand and hold it tightly: "I ask but little--nothing you do not think it right to give. But your friendship would mean much to me--would protect me from evil impulses of which, thank God, you can know nothing. Even to-night I suffered from misdeeds--to put it plainly, from past sins I should not have been even tempted to commit had I known you when I committed them." His words--his confession--moved Barbara to the soul. "I am your friend," she spoke with a certain difficulty, and yet with solemnity. She looked up, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.