She uttered the concluding word with an intensity of scorn that lashed him. She turned to go, but, as on the occasion of their first meeting, he stepped forward and barred the way. "You have no right to put that construction on what I say. Our points of view are different." "Yes--thank the Holy Saints they _are_ different!" "I shall try to understand yours; I beg you to try to understand mine." Their eyes met again. In his it was impossible for her not to read the truth. Slowly she lowered hers. "In my country," she said, more softly now, but still proudly, "love is another sort of thing. In my country I should have said: 'If you respect me, sir, you perhaps love me; if you do not respect me, it is out of the question that you should love me.'" "Respect you?" This was a challenge to his love that he could not leave unanswered. His voice rose fresh and clear. He was no longer under the necessity of seeking words: they leaped, living, to his lips. "Respect you? Good God, I've been worshiping the very thought of you from the first glimpse of you I ever had. This miserable room has been a holy place to me because you have twice been in it. It's been a holy place, because, from the moment I first found you here, it has been a place where I dreamed of you. Night and day I've dreamed of you; and yet have I ever once knowingly done you any harm, trespassed or presumed on your kindness? I've seen no pure morning without thinking of you, no beautiful sunset without remembering you; you've been the harmony of every bar of music, of every bird-song, that I've heard. When you were gone, the world was empty for me; when I was with you, all the rest of the world was nothing, and less than nothing. Respect you? Why, I should have cut off my right hand before I let you even guess what you've discovered to-day!" As he spoke, her whole attitude altered. Her hands were still clenched at her sides, but clenched now in another emotion. "Is--is this true?" she asked. Her voice was very low. "It is true," he answered. "And yet"--she seemed to be not so much addressing him as trying to quiet an accuser in her own heart--"I never spoke one word that could give you any hope." "Not one," he gravely assented. "I never asked for hope; I don't expect it now." "And it is--it is really true?" she murmured. Again he spoke in answer to what she seemed rather to address to her own heart: "Because you found out what I'd done, I wanted you to know why I'd done it--and no more. If you hadn't found out about Chitta, I would never have told you--this." She tried to smile, but something caught the smile and broke it. With a sudden movement, she raised her white hands to her burning face. "Oh," she whispered, "why did you tell me? Why?" "Because you accused me, because----" He could not stand there and see her suffer. "I've been a brute," he said; "I've been a bungling brute." "No, no!" She refused to hear him.