It would have been very difficult to say in what way their friendship had begun; how the acquaintanceship of their youthful days had been renewed, and how it had grown and developed silently and almost imperceptibly through a thousand subtle delicate changes into the present stage, when all talk of ‘friendship’ and sympathy was discarded and the words ‘I love you’ had been many a time exchanged on both sides. Fulvia said the least, showed the least; with her it had gone too deep for words. The very fact that all these instincts of her nature had been so crushed, martyred, and repressed, ever since the day on which her mother had handed her over to Marchmont, gave them additional strength and energy now that they had been aroused. In the warmth of this love, which expressed itself in terms of the most delicate homage, all the warmth and passion of her own nature came to life, grew, expanded, developed into an overmastering love, which, however reticent on the outside, within knew no bounds. Almost had she grown to think it well that, if she and Hans were to be united, it would have to be at the cost of her outside glory. No price seemed too great to pay for the experience of a natural love, a spontaneous, mutual delight, an exchange of soul. This was Fulvia’s inner conviction, and with all the strength of her nature she gloried in it; and in all the knowledge of the bitterness of that Dead Sea fruit upon which she had so long been trying to nourish herself, she could not have enough of the sweetness of this. She was reckless of the consequences; her whole emotional system was strung up, goaded to rebellion against her present situation; she often marvelled herself at the thin thread which held her back from responding to Hans with all the eagerness which he showed himself.