He fell on his knees before her where she had dropped on a chair, rigidly upright, as if she were frozen; he warmed her resisting hands in his grasp--and he swore that it was. His oath rang true; truth was stamped on his face; and she believed him.... He besought forgiveness, told her that she must never think of it again, that all men-- "Oh yes," she nodded her comprehension. "I know, I understand. Papa has brought me up on rather liberal lines." He recollected that phrase; she had used it once before. And they both at once remembered Moldehoï and the black clouds. Eva shuddered. "Are you cold, dearest?" But she shook her head, still with a strange light in her eyes. He would have clasped her in his arms but she drew back, and he felt himself rebuffed, almost rejected. He could not understand her. Why no kiss, why no generous reconciliation, if she understood so well, if she had been so liberally trained? But she was perhaps a little upset; he would not be too urgent. It would no doubt blow over. When he was gone, Eva, in her own room, shivered and her teeth chattered as if she had an ague. And she began to cry bitterly, miserably, with deep despairing sobs, for grief that she lived, that she was a rational being--a woman--above all, that she had ever loved; that the world existed, that everything was so mean, so base--a mud heap! She loathed it all. She felt as if she had never really understood any of the books she had read; neither the "Faery Queen" nor "Ghosts"--especially "Ghosts"; never understood anything she had learnt under her father's "rather liberal" training. The white-feathery down of her illusions was blown into space; a rough hand had rubbed away the bloom from her most secret and inmost soul; the sacred innocence of her maidenhood had been dragged in the gutter. For the first time the peace of her great but reasonable love for Frank came into violent collision with the romance of her girlish dreams, and the balance of the two feelings was destroyed--of the practical and the romantic side of her character. X.