“How can you ask?” she said almost bitterly. “You surely must know how terrible they were to me! You could not be the man you have seemed to be to-day if you did not know what you were doing to me in making all those terrible threats. You must know how cruel they were.” “I am afraid I don’t understand,” he said earnestly, the trouble still most apparent in his eyes, “Would you mind being a little more explicit? Would you mind telling me exactly what you think I wrote you that sounded like a threat?” He asked the question half hesitatingly, because he was not quite sure whether he was justified in thus obtaining private information under false pretenses, and yet he felt that he must know just what troubled her or he could never help her; and he was sure that if she knew he was an utter stranger, even a kindly one, those gentle lips would never open to inform him upon her torturer. As it was she could tell him her trouble with a perfectly clear conscience, thinking she was telling it to the man who knew all about it. But his hesitation about prying into an utter stranger’s private affairs even with a good motive, gave him an air of troubled dignity, and real anxiety to know his fault that puzzled the girl more than all that had gone before. “I cannot understand how you can ask such a question, since it has been the constant subject of discussion in all our letters!” she replied, sitting up with asperity and drying her tears. She was on the verge of growing angry with him for his petty, wilful misunderstanding of words whose meaning she felt he must know well. “I do ask it,” he said quietly, “and, believe me, I have a good motive in doing so.” She looked at him in surprise. It was impossible to be angry with those kindly eyes, even though he did persist in a wilful stupidity.