"I can understand all--but one thing," she went on after a while. "Why have you brought me to this--here--at night alone with you--to tell me this--to make me--me--oh, change in my feelings--to you? Oh, must I say it?" she cried--"tell you the truth--that--that--now since I see you as you are--I--I,--I am willing to go!" "Hush, Helen, my child, my God--don't crush me--don't--listen, child--listen! I am a villain--a doubly-dyed, infamous one--when you hear"-- She shook her head and put one of her pretty hands over his mouth. "Let me tell you all, first. Let me finish. After all this, why have you brought me here to tell me this, when all you had to do was to keep silent a few more hours--take me on to the station, as you said--and--and--" "I will tell you," he said gently. "Yes, you have asked the question needed to be explained. Now hear from my own lips my infamy--not all of it, God knows--that would take the night; but this peculiar part of it. Do you know why I love to stroke your hair, why I love to touch it, to touch you, to look into your eyes; why I should love, next to one thing of all earth, to take you in my arms and smother you--kill you with kisses--your hair, your eyes, your mouth?" She hid her face, crimson. "Did no one tell you, ever tell you--how much you look like your cousin"--he stopped--he could not say the word, but she guessed. White with shame, she sprang up from him, startled, hurt. Her heart tightened into a painful thing which pricked her. "Then--then--it is not I--but my Cousin Alice--oh--I--yes--I did hear--I should have known"--it came from her slowly and with a quivering tremor. He seized her hands and drew her back down by him on the sofa.