"We all go through life with a great deal of foolish luggage," she said. "And sometimes you have an impulse to just drop everything--and run away." "I can understand that," Corriston said. "But did you have to run away quite so fast? It's hard to believe it was for anybody's good, including your own." "It might have been," she said. "It might have been for my good and then later, partly for your good. Please don't judge me too harshly before I've had a chance to tell you exactly what happened." He reached out for her and kissed her even as she came into his arms. He had expected her to be angry, to withdraw, but instead she encircled his strong back with a surprising fierceness. When he released her, her eyes were shining. "I'm glad you did that ... darling! Very glad. But we're still in trouble." "I know that. But we're in love, too. And you just promised to tell me what happened." "Well, I guess I just ... just regressed." "You what?" "Regressed. You know, like when I was a headstrong little brat of a child. We all do that at times. You'll have to admit there was some excuse for me. You weren't born in a house with a hundred rooms, with servants always coming and going, and outside gardens with big red and yellow flowers where you couldn't even run and hide without being smothered, without being searched for and brought screaming and kicking back inside. "You don't know what it means to know you haven't a father, only a stern, cold, black-coated man standing away off in the darkness somewhere and watching people bow down before him. "You don't know what it means to be told: 'You're Stephen Ramsey's daughter. _Behave. Behave. Behave!_'" "I scarcely ever saw my father. And when I did see him he was as cold as one of the slabs in the big mausoleum he took so much pride in, the big family mausoleum which only a Ramsey was permitted to visit. And yet I think he loved me in his own cold way. I think he still does." She fell silent for a moment and then an overpowering need to tell Corriston more seemed to come upon her. "I was never allowed to see young men, not even to go for a ride in the park. Anyone of them might be a fortune seeker, because no young man, even if he is madly in love with a girl, can quite shut his eyes to wealth as one additional reason for loving her. "So I never saw any young men. I wasn't permitted to even go to a dance, or walk in the moonlight on a balcony. I wanted to go to dances, wanted at least one young man to kiss me damned hard." "Sure you did," Corriston said. "I understand." "I'm going to stop right there, darling. I could tell you what it means to be free to travel, anywhere, anywhere in the world and to see all of the white and shining cities, and to be intoxicated by beauty, and to know at the same time that you are not free, can never hope to be free as other people are free." "And that's why you ran away."