He took her hands. “You know why.” There was no faltering in the look that passed between them now. They were face to face indeed. He got up, and stood apart from her. She waited miserably where she was. “We may be friends now, I believe,” he said. “You'll let me write to you? You'll trust me?” “I shall live in your letters,” she said. “I read nothing else but those I have. They are all the help I have.” Then with a cry she broke out, “Oh, Jack, what a mess you've made of our affairs!” He laughed bitterly. “Do you know my tale?” “I guess it,” she said. “I played the rogue,” he told her, “to a good girl, who was as far from my understanding as I was from hers. I thought that I had got over--it, you know, and that she and I could be happy together. Absurd, absurd! God bless her, she's happy now. I swear to you that I meant to do her honour--and directly I found out what she really wanted, I would have given it her. You'll not believe that I was such a fool as to suppose she could feel happy with my ideas of wedded life--but I did. Oh, Heavens! Poor dear, affectionate, simple soul, she felt naked! She shivered at her own plight, and wondered why I'd been so unkind to her, seeing I was by ordinary so kind. I shudder to think what she must have gone through.” “But,” she said, anxious to save him, “but she knew what your beliefs were--and accepted them. You told me so.” “Queen Mab,” he said gravely, “she was a woman, not a fairy. And please to observe the difference. She, poor dear, felt as if she was stripped until she married. You will feel stripped when you do. Yet you both do it for the same reason. She obeys the law because she dare not break it; you because you choose to keep it. Despoina! Despoina!” She laughed, a little awry. “You used to call me Artemis. I'm not she any more.” “You are all the goddesses. You do what you please. Your mind is of Artemis; you have the form of Demeter, the grave-eyed spirit of the corn--and your gown, I observe, is blue, as hers was. I see Hera in you, too, the peering, proud lady of intolerant eyelids; and Kore, the pale, sad wife--which makes you your own daughter, my dear; and Gaia, by whom the Athenians swore when they were serious,--Gaia, the Heart of the Earth. All these you are in turns; but to me Despoina, the Lady of the Country, whose secrets no man knows but me.” She was now by his side, very pale and pure in her distress. She put her hand on his shoulder as she leaned to him. “Dearest, there is one of my secrets you have not learned. May I tell it you?” He listened sideways, not able to look at her. She felt him tremble. “I think not--I think not. You will tell Ingram first--then do as you please. Don't ask me to listen. Haven't I told you that I see you every night?” “And I tell you nothing of my secret?” “I never ask you.” “But do I not tell you? Can I keep it?” “You don't speak to me. You never speak. You look. Fairies don't speak with the tongue. They have better ways.”