And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her--for with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late--that mystery had been responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of a lonely soul. And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to herself and to the world. Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her character. There was no one in authority to tell her--check, guide, or direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead. "To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis--that is the way I am trying to live," she said, seriously. "You are bringing it to me." "If that is so--then I had better depart as I came and leave you in peace." "It's too late." "Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?" "Could _you_ recover?" "I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake." "Do you _want_ to?" he asked, almost angrily. "I am not thinking of myself, Louis." "I _want_ you to. I don't want you _not_ to think about yourself all the time." She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms outward: "Kelly Neville! _What_ do you suppose loving you means to me?" "Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?" "Why--I suppose I do--in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy--I--" She glanced up shyly--"I am glad that I am--loved--" "You darling!" She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in a forest. "You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said, rumpling her hair. "You say so." "Breaking my heart because you won't marry me." "No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet." "I love you too much--" "That is literary bosh, Louis." "Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want you for my wife?" "You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?" "I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted patiently.