She was glad to obey. She looked and looked. And as she looked, she saw her heaven--at last her home. Something lifted that for long had lain a dead-weight on her heart, a question that now wafted like a fragrance from her lips. “You care--for me?” “Dolores....” “You have longed for me as I have longed for you?” “Didn’t you know from the first? I tell you to implore you--don’t trust me. I am no longer strong, Dolores. Against my will, against Jack’s faith---- Life, position, integrity--everything is a trifle to me except the need to know---- Dolores, will you try to understand? Won’t you forgive and pity me? I am terrified for you. You must be stronger than I.” She did not appear to have heard him. “You love me, then. You _love_ me.” Over and over again the answer to her question gave sweet form to her lips. Her head fell back. Her eyes pursued his. The young Airedale, convinced at last that he was unwelcome, emerged from under the chair, gave them a reproachful look, then trotted out of the room. His exit seemed to impress John anew with their aloneness. He drew up and away from her. “Remember,” he warned, “that hopelessness is a dangerous state. So long as I had hope I was strong. Now that I am hopeless--hopeless----” It was then that he told her of his interview with Catherine. Knowing his wife as most did not, he could not hope to change her private and particular reasons for refusing to free him. As Clarke Shayle had said, Catherine could not be “reached.” He had promised Jack to help Dolores toward a safe future. He was glad of to-night’s opportunity to learn what she wished that future to be. But the girl no longer was restrained by his restraint. Now that she understood, she had no thought of herself except as it might concern him. And why consider the future in preference to the here and now? Why lower her eyes from that first sight of home and heaven? The admiration and pity which she felt in her mind for him blended into a yearning desire voluntarily to satisfy the demands spoken only in the glaze of his eyes, in the pallor of his face, in the stiff set of his lips. “Maybe you would be comforted,” she ventured, “to know how much I----” Although he shrank farther back, his fingers, still pressed against her throat, conducted the tremor that passed through him. “I’d give my soul to hear you say it. Surely you know that? And yet I must not hear--I dare not hear. Don’t trust me. Don’t try me.” “Does love try love?” Her eyes widened incredulously. “Isn’t love a question, incomplete unless answered? You say that you care as I do--that you have cared all along. You would not tell me if it were not true. You ask me by loving me. Let me answer. You want to hear me! Don’t you--_don’t_ you, John?”