Colville hesitated in bewilderment. "Imogene!" he cried at last, "I don't understand this. Don't you think Mrs. Bowen likes you?" "She detests me." "Oh, no, no, no! That's too cruel an error. You mustn't think that. I can't let you. It's morbid. I'm sure that she's devotedly kind and good to you." "Being kind and good isn't liking. I know what she thinks. But of course I can't expect to convince you of it; no one else could see it." "No!" said Colville, with generous fervour. "Because it doesn't exist and you mustn't imagine it. You are as sincerely and unselfishly regarded in this house as you could be in your own home. I'm sure of that. I know Mrs. Bowen. She has her little worldlinesses and unrealities of manner, but she is truth and loyalty itself. She would rather die than be false, or even unfair. I knew her long ago--" "Yes," cried the girl, "long before you knew me!" "And I know her to be the soul of honour," said Colville, ignoring the childish outburst. "Honour--like a man's," he added. "And, Imogene, I want you to promise me that you'll not think of her any more in that way. I want you to think of her as faithful and loving to you, for she is so. Will you do it?" Imogene did not answer him at once. Then she turned upon him a face of radiant self-abnegation. "I will do anything you tell me. Only tell me things to do." The next time he came he again saw Mrs. Bowen alone before Imogene appeared. The conversation was confined to two sentences. "Mr. Colville," she said, with perfectly tranquil point, while she tilted a shut book to and fro on her knee, "I will thank you not to defend me." Had she overheard? Had Imogene told her? He answered, in a fury of resentment for her ingratitude that stupefied him. "I will never speak of you again." Now they were enemies; he did not know how or why, but he said to himself, in the bitterness of his heart, that it was better so; and when Imogene appeared, and Mrs. Bowen vanished, as she did without another word to him, he folded the girl in a vindictive embrace. "What is the matter?" she asked, pushing away from him. "With me?" "Yes; you seem so excited." "Oh, nothing," he said, shrinking from the sharpness of that scrutiny in a woman's eyes, which, when it begins the perusal of a man's soul, astonishes and intimidates him; he never perhaps becomes able to endure it with perfect self-control. "I suppose a slight degree of excitement in meeting you may be forgiven me." He smiled under the unrelaxed severity of her gaze. "Was Mrs. Bowen saying anything about me?" "Not a word," said Colville, glad of getting back to the firm truth again, even if it were mere literality. "We have made it up," she said, her scrutiny changing to a lovely appeal for his approval. "What there was to make up." "Yes?" "I told her what you had said. And now it's all right between us, and you mustn't be troubled at that any more. I did it to please you."