"I want to speak to you," he said, suddenly, putting out his hand to hers, which lay on her knee. She turned to him, startled. "I want to have no secrets from you," he said, drawing his breath quickly. "I told you lies one day, because I thought it was my duty to tell lies. Another person was concerned. But now I can't. Julie!--you'll let me call you so, won't you? The name is already"--he hesitated; then the words rushed out--"part of my life! Julie, it's quite true, there is a kind of understanding between your little cousin Aileen and me. At Simla she attracted me enormously. I lost my head one day in the woods, when she--whom we were all courting--distinguished me above two or three other men who were there. I proposed to her upon a sudden impulse, and she accepted me. She is a charming, soft creature. Perhaps I wasn't justified. Perhaps she ought to have had more chance of seeing the world. Anyway, there was a great row. Her guardians insisted that I had behaved badly. They could not know all the details of the matter, and I was not going to tell them. Finally I promised to withdraw for two years." He paused, anxiously studying her face. It had grown very white, and, he thought, very cold. But she quickly rose, and, looking down upon him, said: "Nothing of that is news to me. Did you think it was?" And moving to the tea-table, she began to make provision for a fresh supply of tea. Both words and manner astounded him. He, too, rose and followed her. "How did you first guess?" he said, abruptly. "Some gossip reached me." She looked up with a smile. "That's what generally happens, isn't it?" "There are no secrets nowadays," he said, sorely. "And then, there was Miss Lawrence?" "Yes, there was Miss Lawrence." "Did you think badly of me?" "Why should I? I understand Aileen is very pretty, and--" "And will have a large fortune. You understand that?" he said, trying to carry it off lightly. "The fact is well known, isn't it?" He sat down, twisting his hat between his hands. Then with an exclamation he dashed it on the floor, and, rising, he bent over Julie, his hands in his pockets. "Julie," he said, in a voice that shook her, "don't, for God's sake, give me up! I have behaved abominably, but don't take your friendship from me. I shall soon be gone. Our lives will go different ways. That was settled--alack!--before we met. I am honorably bound to that poor child. She cares for me, and I can't get loose. But these last months have been happy, haven't they? There are just three weeks left. At present the strongest feeling in my heart is--" He paused for his word, and he saw that she was looking through the window to the trees of the garden, and that, still as she was, her lip quivered.