"I mean," answered the girl swiftly, willfully misinterpreting and turning his half-spoken question another way, "I mean that I am sure that some trouble has brought you here. I do not wish to force your confidence--I have no right to do so--yet I should like to enjoy it. Can't you give it to me? I want to help you. I want to do my best to make some return for what you have been to me and have done for me." "I ask but one thing," he said quickly. "And what is that?" But again he checked himself. "No," he said, "I am not free to ask anything of you." And that answer to Enid Maitland was like a knife thrust in the heart. The two had been standing, confronting each other. Her heart grew faint within her. She stretched out her hand vaguely, as if for support. He stepped toward her, but before he reached her she caught the back of the chair and sank down weakly. That he should be bound and not free, had never once occurred to her. She had quite misinterpreted the meaning of his remark. The man did not help her; he could not help her. He just stood and looked at her. She fought valiantly for self-control a moment or two and then utterly oblivious to the betrayal of her feelings involved in the question--the moments were too great for consideration of such trivial matters--she faltered: "You mean there is some other woman?" He shook his head in negation. "I don't understand." "There was some other woman?" "Where is she now?" "Dead." "But you said you were not free." He nodded. "Did you care so much for her that now--that now--" "Enid," he cried desperately. "Believe me, I never knew what love was until I met you." The secret was out now, it had been known to her long since, but now it was publicly proclaimed. Even a man as blind, as obsessed, as he could not mistake the joy that illuminated her face at this announcement. That very joy and satisfaction produced upon him, however, a very different effect than might have been anticipated. Had he been free indeed he would have swept her to his breast and covered her sweet face with kisses broken by whispered words of passionate endearment. Instead of that he shrank back from her and it was she who was forced to take up the burden of the conversation. "You say that she is dead," she began in sweet appealing bewilderment, "and that you care so much for me and yet you--" "I am a murderer," he broke out harshly. "There is blood upon my hands, the blood of a woman who loved me and whom, boy as I was, I thought that I loved. She was my wife, I killed her." "Great Heaven!" cried the girl, amazed beyond measure or expectation by this sudden avowal which she had never once suspected, and her hand instinctively went to the bosom of her dress where she kept that soiled, water-stained packet of letters, "are you that man?" "I am that man that did that thing, but what do you know?" he asked quickly, amazed in his turn.