"Tony dear," I said softly, when he had finished, "I like you better than any man I know, except one; and that one thinks of me as his good little sister, so you needn't be afraid of _his_ interference. But--there's something that _does_ interfere!" "What is it?" he eagerly wanted to know. "It is--that you don't really love me." He stared at me through the deepening dusk. "Don't love you? Good Lord, Lady Peggy, I'm a fool about you! Any dough-head can see that." "Ah, but I'm not a dough-head. I know you don't love me. You proved that last night." "For the life of me, I can't think what you mean. I I told you I'd try to be your friend, but you knew what that meant! Don't keep me in suspense." "You've hurt my feelings dreadfully. I've been brooding over it all day." "I--hurt your feelings? Why, you ought to know I wouldn't for the world----" "But you did. You refused to trust me. There can be no love without trust." "I'd trust you with my life. I can't to save myself guess what you're driving at----" He stopped suddenly. My meaning had dawned on him in that instant. "Now you've guessed, haven't you?" I asked, when for a few seconds, which I counted with heartbeats, he had sat tensely silent. "Maybe I have. But see here, Peggy, you aren't holding that against me, are you? It wouldn't be fair. I'd trust you with anything of my own; but when it comes to other people's business--official business----" "Did you ever hear the lines, 'Trust me not at all, or all in all?'" I continued to torture him. "It was Tennyson who made Vivien say those words to Merlin. She was deceiving him, and meant to ruin him when she'd wormed out his secret; for that reason, it isn't a very appropriate quotation. But, otherwise, it's particularly so. If you trusted me for yourself, you'd trust me for others, too. It's the same thing--or else it's nothing. I'm not like Vivien. I don't mean to deceive you, or ruin you, or anything horrid. And I couldn't if I would!" "You don't need to tell me that," said Tony, very miserable, and making me miserable as well. "I know you're true blue--the truest and bluest--but there are some things I've got no right to do, even for you, Peggy. I'd cut my tongue out to please you, I do believe I would, but to use it in a dishonourable way for your sake is dif----" "There! I _told_ you you didn't love me!" I reproached him. "You accuse me now of wanting you to do something dishonourable. I don't want you to! I can't see that it would be dishonourable to put me out of suspense about a dear friend like Captain March, a man who's in love with my sister, and wants to marry her, as you surely know. But that settles everything between us, of course. To be perfectly honest with you, Tony, I must say that I'm not certain, even if you did what I have asked, that I'd be able to do what _you_ ask--love you, except as a friend. I've said before that I couldn't. But I might have changed my mind in future, for all I know, if----"