"Sooner than have gone to you for sisterly help and comfort, such as you gave just now, I would have frozen in the snow, and been less cold. Unless you break down the bar you put between us, I never want to see your face again,--never, living or dead! I want no sham farce of friendship between us, benefits given or received: your hand touching mine as it might touch Bone's or David Gaunt's; your voice cooing in my ear as it did just now, cool and friendly. It maddened me. Rest can scarcely come from you to me, now." "I understand you. I am to go back, then? It was a long road,--and cold, Douglas." He stopped abruptly, looked at her steadily. "Do not taunt me, child! I am a blunt man: what words say, they mean, to me. Do you love me, Theodora?" She did not speak, drawn back from him in the opposite shadow of the door-way. He leaned forward, his breath coming hurried, low. "Are you cold? See how shaggy this great cloak is,--is it wide enough for you and me? Will you come to me, Theodora?" "I did come to you. Look! you put me back: 'There shall be no benefits given or received between us.'" "How did you come?"--gravely, as a man should speak to a woman, childish trifling thrust aside. "How did you mean to take me home? As a pure, God-fearing woman should the man she loved? Into your heart, into your holiest thought? to gather strength from my strength, to make my power your power, your God my God? to be one with me? Was it so you came?" He waited a minute. How cold and lonely the night was! How near rest and home came to him in this woman standing there! Would he lose them? One moment more would tell. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, feeble. "There is a great gulf between you and me, Theodora. I know that. Will you cross it? Will you come to me?" She came to him. He gathered her into his arms as he might a little child, never to be cold again; he felt her full heart throb passionately against his own; he took from her burning lips the first pure, womanly kiss: she was all his. But when she turned her head, there was a quick upward glance of her eyes, he knew not whether of appeal or thanks. There was a Something in the world more near and real to her than he; he loved her the better for it: yet until he found that Unknown God, they were not one. It was an uncertain step broke the silence, cracking the crusted snow. "Why, Gaunt!" said Palmer, "what are you doing in the cold? Come to the fire, boy!" He could afford to speak cordially, heartily, out of the great warmth in big own breast. Theodora was heaping shavings on the ashes. Gaunt took them from her. "Let me do it," he muttered. "I'd like to make your whole life warm, Dode,--your life, and--any one's you love." Dode's face flushed with a happy smile. Even David never would think of her as alone again. Poor David! She never before had thought how guileless he was,--how pitiful and solitary his life. "Come home with us," she said, eagerly, holding out her hand.