"Never!" she answered, and now Colville stopped short, while a cold bewilderment bathed him from head to foot. It must be some sort of jest, though he could not tell where the humour was, and he could not treat it otherwise than seriously. "Lina, I have loved you from the first moment that I saw you this winter, and Heaven knows how long before!" "Yes; I know that." "And every moment." "Oh, I know that too." "Even if I had no sort of hope that you cared for me, I loved you so much that I must tell you before we parted--" "I expected that--I intended it." "You intended it! and you do love me! And yet you won't--Ah, I don't understand!" "How could _you_ understand? I love you--I blush and burn for shame to think that I love you. But I will never marry you; I can at least help doing that, and I can still keep some little trace of self-respect. How you must really despise me, to think of anything else, after all that has happened! Did you suppose that I was merely waiting till that poor girl's back was turned, as you were? Oh, how can you be yourself, and still be yourself? Yes, Jenny Wheelwright was right. You are too much of a mixture, Theodore Colville"--her calling him so showed how often she had thought of him so--"too much for her, too much for Imogene, too much for me; too much for any woman except some wretched creature who enjoys being trampled on and dragged through the dust, as you have dragged me." "_I_ dragged _you_ through the dust? There hasn't been a moment in the past six months when I wouldn't have rolled myself in it to please you." "Oh, I knew that well enough! And do you think that was flattering to me?" "That has nothing to do with it. I only know that I love you, and that I couldn't help wishing to show it even when I wouldn't acknowledge it to myself. That is all. And now when I am free to speak, and you own that you love me, you won't--I give it up!" he cried desperately. But in the next breath he implored, "_Why_ do you drive me from you, Lina?" "Because you have humiliated me too much." She was perfectly steady, but he knew her so well that in the twilight he knew what bitterness there must be in the smile which she must be keeping on her lips. "I was here in the place of her mother, her best friend, and you made me treat her like an enemy. You made me betray her and cast her off." "I?" "Yes, you! I knew from the very first that you did not really care for her, that you were playing with yourself, as you were playing with her, and I ought to have warned her." "It appears to me you did warn her," said Colville, with some resentful return of courage.