"Indeed you may, Val; and I know you meant nothing but what was kind; only I--I am so unaccustomed to hearing--they never talk about me, and I wish they would, oh, I _wish_ they would," her voice broke, but she continued nevertheless: "Val, you don't know how hard it is--oh, what am I saying?"--she stopped confused and panting, terrified at what she had been led into. "Look here," said Val, slowly, "you don't mind me, do you? You don't need to care what you say before me?--_I_ shan't tell, of course I shan't. They always used to be down upon you at home, and I suppose they go on the same? Just you get it out to me, Leo," and he nodded encouragingly. By the end of half-an-hour, during which the two had wandered away from the village street and the eyes of spectators, Leo had "got it out," and if the truth were told, pretty thoroughly. Recollect how young, and naturally frank, and in a sense absolutely friendless she was. And then it was only Val--she felt almost as though she were speaking to a dog. Certainly there was, as we said before, an element of canine sympathy in the silent, solemn, appreciative air with which her companion listened. He never interrupted. When he spoke, it was to utter a brief ejaculation or to put a question, a leading question, one which gently turned the lock a little more on the opening side. Sometimes he merely said, "Well?"--but how comforting was that "Well"! "You see Godfrey was so very good to me, and I do miss him so," sighed the speaker at last. It was perhaps hardly the way in which a devoted wife would have spoken of a husband only six weeks dead, but it exactly expressed the truth. Godfrey Stubbs had never been idealised, but he had been readily accepted as a lover by a barely emancipated schoolgirl who did not know what love was; and three serene, unimaginative years had been contentedly passed under his fostering care. Had he lived, and had children been born to the pair, it is easy to conjecture the sort of woman Leonore would have developed into; as it was, she had grown more mentally and spiritually in the past six weeks than in the whole course of her previous existence. And then came the passionate desire for expression, the helpless sense of an inner burden too heavy to be borne alone. It was lucky it was Valentine Purcell who came in Leo's way: the dam must have burst somewhere. "You won't tell any one, Val?" "Rather not. I should think not. I should just say not, Leo." Fervour gathered with each assurance. "They wouldn't understand, would they?" faltered she. "Of course they wouldn't. People never do," asseverated he.