“Thanks, so much; but I am afraid I ought to get back to Chartries. I said I would be back.” Mr. Challoner waited till Helen was close to them. “Perhaps if Helen adds her voice to mine,” he said. He turned quickly and saw her. And there was no need of words, but once more the three stood together, hands clasped. This time the vicar did not go back alone to his empty room. CHAPTER XIII Martin was seated alone with Stella in the drawing-room of her mother’s house, eating muffins, thoughtfully but rather rapidly, while she poured out tea. “Fancy,” he said, “it is only a week ago since--since the party at Lady Sunningdale’s, since I knew.” “Knew what?” asked Stella, quite unnecessarily. “Ah, I only know one thing now. I think I have forgotten everything else.” “Say it then,” said she. “That I love you? Are you not tired of hearing me say that yet?” She smiled, brought him his tea, and sat on the arm of his chair. “I can’t believe that a woman can ever be tired of hearing that, if the right man says it. Oh, Martin, how lucky it was you, and that it was I!” Martin put his teacup down, having drunk with amazing speed. “Why, who else could it have been?” he said; “how could it have been otherwise?” “No, I suppose not. Yet you didn’t know, as you call it, for a long time. Supposing you had gone on not knowing?” He leaned back in his chair looking at her, his black eyes shining in the firelight. “And when I did know, I frightened you,” he said. “Yes, a little. But I loved it. You see, I had never seen you really in earnest before, except when you were playing. You always put everything you had or were into that.” “I know. That is what Karl Rusoff told me. He told me to experience all I could, because it would all go to make me play. He calls it spiritual alchemy, like when you put a plant in the earth and water it, the earth and the water are somehow turned into the blossom of that plant while another plant would turn them into a different flower. In fact, darling, you are going to come out of the ends of my fingers, whereas if I were a great Greek scholar you would become iambics.” He looked at her and his smile deepened into gravity. “Oh, Stella, Stella,” he said, “did the world ever hold anything like you?” She leaned back till her face was close to his and put her arm round his neck. “Yes, yes; do that with me!” she said, “absorb me, let me become part of you. Indeed, I want no other existence at all. Do you know the Persian legend, how the lover knocked at the door of his beloved, and the beloved said, ‘Who is that?’ and he replied, ‘It is I.’ And the one inside said, ‘There is not room for two.’ Then he went away again, and came back after a year, and knocked again. And again from inside the voice said, ‘Who is that?’ But this time he said, ‘It is thou.’ So the door was opened and he went in.”