He had answered in what, if she had been less absorbed in herself and her own concerns, she might have realised was a dangerously still voice: "I think I can persuade Godfrey to let her go. Apart from the child altogether, you ought to have a change." And then--then she had said, rather listlessly, not at all bitterly, "Oh, it doesn't matter about me!" Such a simple phrase, embodying an obvious truth, yet they had forced from him the words: "I think it does matter about you, Laura. At least I know it matters a good deal to me, for, as of course you know by now, I love you." And if his voice had remained quite low and steady, she had seen the blazing, supplicating eyes.... But he had looked away, at once, when he had uttered those irrevocable words; and after a few moments, which had seemed to him an eternity, had come that low, heart-felt cry, "Oh, but this is terrible----" * * * * * "Terrible? Why, Laura?" He crossed his arms, and turning, gazed straight down at her bowed figure. Again there came a long, unnatural pause. And then she lifted up her face, and under the shadow cast by her wide-brimmed garden hat he saw that even her forehead was flushed. There was an anguished look in the large, deeply blue eyes, which were to him the most exquisite and revealing feature of her delicately drawn face. "Perhaps I ought not to have said 'terrible,'" she said at last in a low voice, "but--but degrading, ignoble, _hateful_, Oliver." She added, her false calm giving way, "And to me such a bitter, bitter disappointment!" "Why?" he asked harshly. "Why a disappointment, Laura? Most women, nay, all wise human beings, value love--any kind of love offered by even the most unworthy--as the most precious thing in the world!" His face had become expressionless, and the measured, carefully chosen words made her feel suddenly ashamed, but with a shame merged in an eager hope that she had cruelly misunderstood her--friend. She stood up and took a step towards him. "Oliver," she said diffidently; "forgive me! I was stupid not to understand. Of course we love one another," she was on firm ground now. "All friends love one another, and you've been such a good friend to me, and more, far more, than a good friend to my poor brother--to Gillie." He withdrew his gaze from her beseeching eyes, and looked away once more. Now was his chance to play the hypocrite, to eat the words which had given her so much offence.... Hardly knowing that he spoke aloud, he muttered hoarsely, "I can't!" And then he turned to her: "Listen, Laura. I owe you the truth. I have loved you, yes, and in the sense you think so ignoble and so degrading, almost from the first day we met. As time went on, I thought it impossible that you did not know that."