‘There is nothing to be discussed. If it had not been for my promise to you yesterday, I should not be here now. As it is, I waited; but only to say that I am going at once--to clear myself--to tell you that I never knew....’ ‘Why, Hugo, how _could_ you know? If you had known, you would not have been what you are to me, the frank, open-hearted comrade, whose friendship and companionship have made me so happy.’ ‘If I had known,’ said Hugo, ‘I should not have behaved myself like a mountebank, such as I must have seemed to you many a time, with my impertinences and fancies. Mrs. Mallory is quite right--for me to be thinking of balls and amusements and enjoyments is folly--madness. What an ape! what a confounded, conceited, self-important _ape_ I must have seemed all these years! Acting as if I had great prospects before me, while all the time I am a beggar. It is hideous!’ He was getting excited again. His eyes began to flash and his foot to beat the floor restlessly. Sebastian noticed that he had not once looked at him during all this scene, but away from him: anywhere rather than meet his eyes. ‘Let me go,’ he added, in a choked voice. ‘Let me go, and forget me. That is all you and I can do, and it must be done at once.’ ‘You will never leave me, any more than I can, or shall try to forget you.’ ‘Why? Because I am under such obligations to you, that you can force me to obey you from very shame?’ asked Hugo, bitterly. ‘Not at all, Hugo, but because you love me, and I love you (if it were not so, after all these years, it would be strange), and you could never find it in your heart to wound me as such a proceeding would wound me.’ At last Hugo’s eyes turned to him; at last he stood still and looked at him, and Sebastian returned the look from his inmost heart. This soul-to-soul, searching gaze was a prolonged one, and Hugo at last, turning away, sat down on the sofa again, put his hand before his face, and said in a broken voice, ‘You could always do what you liked with me, and you can now. What do you want?’ ‘I only want you to listen to me and _believe_ me,’ said Sebastian. ‘If you will only believe me, all will be well.’ A movement of the head showed that Hugo was listening. ‘You have called me cruel--you have said that what I have done was not right. I cannot hear such accusations unmoved. Why have I been cruel?’ ‘In putting me into a false position--making me believe myself to be what I am not.’ ‘Somewhat insincere it may have been, but I do not see how I could well have acted otherwise. When your mother died you were equally badly off, so far as worldly circumstances go, as you are now. _You_ did not know it. It was her weakness that she could not bear you, whom she adored, to know it. She had a horror of your learning that the institution at which you were being educated was a ch--I mean----’ ‘A charity-school--yes.’