“Oh! I’m ashamed.” Alice spoke very low, it was almost a whisper. “And yet, do you know, in a way I’m glad. It showed me that I’ve got something that I was almost afraid wasn’t in me at all. In spite of my pride I have been sometimes suddenly frightened, and wondered whether it were really in me to care for anyone at all. And then all in a moment this has come. I would die for Tony; I would let him trample on me, kill me, beat me. Sometimes, when we are sitting, all of us, so quietly there in the drawing-room or in the garden, and he talking, oh, I want to get up and fling myself at him and hold him there before them all. I have been afraid during these last few days that I shall suddenly lose control. I have wondered once or twice whether I am not going mad. Now you see why I must go.” She buried her face in her hands. Lady Gale bent over her. “Alice dear, I understand, of course I understand. But let me try and show you, dear, why you must stay. Just for this next week or two. You can be of so much help to me and to Tony. I have been having rather a bad time too. It is like walking in the dark with things on every side of you that you cannot see. And I want you, dear.” Alice did not speak. The bells in the distant town struck ten, first one and then another and then five or six at once. Five lights of boats at sea gleamed in a row like stars that had fallen into the water, through the dark mist of the trees a curved moon sailed. “You see, dear, things are so difficult now, and they seem to grow worse every day. And really it comes to this. You and I and Mr. Maradick all love Tony. The others don’t count. Of course I’m not sure about Mr. Maradick, but I think he cares very much in his own way, and so we are, you see, a bodyguard for him. I mean to do as he wants to. Tony has always seen things perfectly clearly and has known what he wanted, but now there are other things that make it harder for him. I hoped when we came down here that he was going to marry you, dear, but perhaps after all it is better that he shouldn’t. The only thing that matters in the least in this world is love, getting it and keeping it; and if a man or a woman have secured that, there is nothing else that is of any importance. And so I always determined that Tony should have his own choice, that he should go when he wished to.” She paused and took Alice’s hand and stroked it. “This is the first time that he has ever really been in love. Of course I know—I knew at once by the light in his eyes—and I want him to have it and to keep it and, whatever happens, not to miss it. But of course I must not know about it, because then his father would have to be told. Sir Richard thinks a great deal of the family. It is the only thing that matters to him very much. And of course there would be terrible scenes and I should have to go with the family. So, whatever happens, I must not know about it.” “Yes,” said Alice, “I see that.”