Then, rather suddenly, he withdrew his arms from about the slight rounded figure enfolded in them. The utterance of what he had made up his mind must now be said had become immeasurably more difficult during the last few moments. He asked himself, with rough self-reproach and self-contempt, why he had so delayed, why he had allowed her to come here to be so wholly at his mercy, and he--yes, he--at hers? He got up and walked slowly to the other side of the great room, and came back, even more slowly, to where Barbara was sitting. There he knelt down by her. "Barbara," he said, "be kind to me! Help me! My pure angel, what does your heart tell you would be to-night the greatest proof of my love--of my adoration of you?" And then the most amazing, and, to the man looking up at her with burning eyes the most moving, change came over the face bent down to his. Barbara had understood. But she said nothing,--only slipped down and put her arms, a wholly voluntary movement of caress, round him, in a strange speechless passion of gratitude and tenderness. "Ah, Barbara," he said, "you have made me know you too well. You have allowed me to see too clearly into your heart not to know that I was a brute to ask you to do this thing,--to do that which I knew you believed to be wrong." And, as she pressed more closely to him, her tears wetting his face, he went on: "But I promise,--I swear,--I will never ask it of you again. We will go on as we did,--as we found ourselves able to do,--after the fire." "But will not that make you unhappy?" Her lips scarcely moved as she whispered the words, looking into his strained face with sad, beseeching eyes. "Yes," he said, rather shortly, "if I thought it impossible, or even improbable, that you would become my wife, it would make me very unhappy, but that, or so I believe, is not impossible, not even improbable. Ah, Barbara, must I tell you,--do you wish me to tell you,--everything?" She looked up at him with a sudden fear and perplexity. What did he mean, what was it he had heard and wished to keep from her? But she would trust him, trust him to the end, and so, "No," she whispered, "tell me nothing you would ever regret having told me. I am quite content, nay, more than content, with your goodness to your poor Barbara." * * * * * An hour later Berwick was driving away from the Pavillon du Dauphin, not to the station as Mère Lecerf believed, but to St. Germains, within easy, tantalising distance of the woman he had just left,--a very tearful, a very radiant, a most adoring, and alas! a most adorable Barbara.