For an instant he repented, since it seemed that she would be carried along on the sweet tide of his words to the brink of an indiscretion. Once more she looked up, softly seeking his eyes; and in hers he saw so lovely a light of self-surrender that he involuntarily thanked Heaven that there was no one else to recognise it. In her face was nothing but the thought of him; and, seeing this, he had a swift desire to take her in his arms and experience at its fullest and sweetest the sense that she and her little empire were gladly lost there. In the pause of her mute confession he felt the strongest exultation he had known. Her glance reached him like a cry from an unexplored country; the revelation of her love filled him with the knowledge that she was infinitely more adorable and more desirable than he had thought her. From that moment she realised to him a supreme good, and he never afterwards thought of his other ambitions without a smile of contempt which was almost genuine. But she said nothing: she seemed removed from any necessity of speech, lifted up on a wave of absolute joy, and isolated from all that lay either behind or before. He controlled his impatience for words from her—for he was very sure of one thing; that when they came they would be kind—and chose his own with taste. “Don’t you think that it would be better if we had the courage and the candour to accept things as they are? Don’t you think we would be stronger for all that we must face if we acknowledged—only to each other—the pain and the sweetness of it?” “I have never been blind,” she said softly. “All I ask is that you will not even pretend to be. Is that too much?” “How can it be a question of that?” Her voice trembled a little. Then she hurried illogically on: “But there can be no change—there must be no change. These are things I hoped you would never say.” “The alternative is too wretched: to go on living a lie—and a stupid, unnecessary lie. Why, in Heaven’s name, should there be the figment of hypocrisy between us? I know that I must be content with very little, but I am afraid there is no way of telling you how much I want that little.” She had grown very pale, and she put up her hand and smoothed her hair with a helpless, mechanical gesture. “No, no,” she said—“stop. Let us make an end of it quickly. I was very well content to go on with the lie. I think I should always have been content. But now there is no lie: there is nothing to stand upon any longer. You must get leave, or something, and go away—or I will. I am not—really—very well.” She looked at him miserably, with twitching lips, and he laid a soothing hand—there was still no one to see—upon her arm. “Judith, don’t talk of impossibilities. How could we two live in one world—and apart! Those are the heroics of a dear little schoolgirl. You and I are older, and braver.”