"I only do it to you--and perhaps to myself," said Alice. "He tells me that all the time he was out there, mixed up with the bears and things, and hearing them hoot at night--(at least, I'm not sure if it was the bears--but something hooted)--all that time he thought of me in the most extraordinary way; it was quite touching. I think it was quite noble of him, considering how much he had to do." "What are you going to do about him?" asked Jimmy, after a pause. "I don't know, I'm sure," she replied, "Of course, he's not said anything yet; he's only hinted. I suppose I owe him some return for having thought about me like that; it wouldn't be fair to let him do all that for nothing. Of course, I don't--I don't exactly like him; although, of course, I was very glad to see him; but I shall have to marry somebody--some day." Jimmy looked morosely at the figure in the picture; it was no longer beautiful in his eyes. He thought bitterly of Moira and of the child; he saw this bright and radiant figure at his side drifting away from him, and going to some other man. It was cruel--it was wrong; there must be some way by which he could at least hold her--some way in which he might free himself. Perhaps the most curious thing was that he had no intention at the time of telling her; he did not mean, as he had once meant, to stand before her an heroic, self-sacrificing figure; he wanted her, and not her worship, now. The object in his mind was to keep her away from Ashby Feak, and from all others, until such time as by some impossible means he should be free. "Alice," he said at last, turning towards her, and so setting his back to the picture--"you don't love this man Feak?" "Oh--I don't know," she retorted, with a shrug of her shoulders. "He's very nice--and he's brave--and I think he loves me. What more would anyone ask?" "Alice--have you any love for me--real love, I mean--not this empty thing called friendship?" "Jimmy!" It was of course what she had seemed to see trembling on his lips a score of times; she had had a thought, in fact, that it might be said this very afternoon; but she was very properly astonished for all that. "I mean it," he said. "I love you as I love no one else on earth; there's no one like you anywhere--no one who understands me so perfectly as you do--no one who could help me with my work as you are able to help me. I love you." She sat in a pensive attitude, with her eyes upon the floor; when she spoke she did not look at him, but he was satisfied by the tenderness of her tones and the light blush she had been able to call to the aid of the situation, that he need fear no Ashby Feak. Keeping his back resolutely to that figure in the picture, and so shutting out all that was difficult and impossible, he took her hand a little shamefacedly, noting as he did so that she was careful to look round to see that they were not observed.