"Yes--and it’s taken my breath away. All in a few hours, I’ve seen death and love, and I don’t know what the change is in me, but I’m different. I’ve grown up. I understand. You say I have understood before; but I’ve understood nothing. I should never have come here last year, if I had understood. I should never have continued meeting you in Kensington Gardens, if I had understood. Women don’t understand as a rule; no girl understands. She would never play with love, if she did. I know, suddenly, that I belong to you; that I have no right to marry anyone else. In these last few hours, I’ve felt that a force outside me determines the giving of my life, and it has frightened me. I couldn’t say anything. When you said you were a child, then I suddenly found my tongue. I wasn’t afraid any more. I knew you were a child, my child--my little child--not my master. There’s no mastery in it; you’re just my child." Suddenly she closed her arms round him; she buried her head on his shoulder. "I can’t explain any more!" she whispered--"It’s something I can’t explain--I haven’t any words for it." And, as he held her to him, John thought of the dream he had dreamt, of the field and the cattle, and the white fluttering of the tiny garments, and the clouds sailing in the sky, and again came to him the note in her voice as she told him the most wonderful thing in the whole world. Then, leaning out from the hood, he called out to the gondolier: "Just take us out on the Lagoon before we go back." And they swung round again to his oar. CHAPTER XXXVIII A PROCESS OF HONESTY The very best of us have a strain of selfishness. The most understanding of us are unable to a nicety to grasp the other person’s point of view; and there will always be some little thing, some subtle matter, which it is not in the nature of us to perceive in the nature of someone else. Perhaps this is the surest proof of the existence of the soul. When, on the steps of the hotel, John bid good-night to Jill, there was but one regret in the minds of both of them, that that blessing which they had received at the hands of the old gentleman had come too soon; that in the receipt of it, they had been impostors, unworthy of so close a touch with the Infinite. There is nothing quite so distressing to the honest mind as this and, to avoid it, to mitigate the offence, it is quite a simple process for the honest mind to project itself into some further evil of selfishness, so long as it may gain peace and a free conscience. "There is only one thing that we can do," said John, and, if good intentions weigh, however lightly, in the sensitive scales of justice, let one be here placed in the balance for him. "I know what you are going to say," replied Jill. Of course she knew. They had begun to think alike already. "We must tell her." She nodded her head.