"It is not for me to indict the man. I could not help speaking because you are you. I cannot do any more than warn you. If I transgress, if I am merely a blundering fool--if you are not what I take you for--forget what I have said. Send me away when we return." She had been listening to him, as in a daze. Now she shook her head. "I shall not do that," she said. "Did you take employment with us to say what you have said to me?" "No." She hesitated a moment. "I suppose all men of Koltsoff's sort are the same," she said musingly. "I am not quite so innocent as that. We are wont to accept our European noblemen as husbands with no question as to the wild oats, immediately behind them--or without considering too closely the wild oats that are to be strewn--afterwards. Ah, don't start; that is the way we expatriates are educated--no, not that; but these are the lessons we absorb. And so--" she was looking at Armitage with a hard face, "so the things that impressed you so terribly--I appreciate and thank you for your motives in speaking of them--do not appear so awful to me." Jack, his clean mind in a whirl, was looking at her aghast. "You--you--Anne Wellington! You don't mean that!" She flung her hands from her. "Thank you," she said. "Don't I? Oh, I hate it all!" she cried wildly, "the cross purposings of life; the constant groping--being unable to see clearly--the triumph of lower over higher things--I hate them all. Ah," she turned to Jack pitifully, "promise me for life, in this place of peace, the rest and purity and beauty and love of all this--promise, and I shall stay here now with you, from this minute and never leave it, though Pyramus or King Midas, as you please, beckon from beyond this mossy wall." "Are you speaking metaphorically?" Jack's voice quivered. "For if you are, I--" She interrupted, laughing mirthlessly. "I do not know how I was speaking. Don't bother. I am not worth it. I might have been had I met you sooner--Jack Armitage. For I have learned of you--some things. Don't," she raised her hand as Jack bent forward to speak. "You must n't bother, really. Last night I lived with you a big, clean, thrilling experience and saw strong men doing men's work in the raw, cold, salt air--and I saw a new life. And then--" she was looking straight ahead--"then I was led into a morass where the air was heavy like the tropics, and things all strange, unreal. And why--why now the doubt which of the two I had rather believe to-night. You were too late. I bade you come to us. I am glad, I am proud that I did--for now I know the reason. But--" she smiled wanly at him, "it should have been sooner." "Is--it--too late?" Jack's mouth was shut tight, the muscles bulging on either side of his jaw.