"I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady tones. "And _that_ is what has come between us. Do you think it is something we had better hunt down and destroy--this love that has come between us?" "Is--is that _true_?" she asked in the awed voice of a child. "It seems to be," he managed to say. She slid stiffly to the floor and stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a schoolgirl. "It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, "did it?" She shook her head mechanically. "Well, we know now. Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth after all." She only stared at him, fascinated. No colour had returned to her cheeks. He began to pace the hearth again, lip caught savagely between his teeth. "You are no more amazed than I am to learn the truth," he said. "I never supposed it was that.... And it's been that from the moment I laid eyes on you. I know it now. I'm learning, you see--learning not to lie to myself or to you.... Learning other things, too--God knows what--if this is love--this utter--suffering--" He swung on his heel and began to pace the glimmering tiles toward her: "Discontent, apathy, unhappiness, loneliness--the hidden ache which merely meant I missed you when you were not here--when I was not beside you--all these are now explained before your bed of justice. Your court has heard the truth to-night; and you, Valerie, are armed with justice--the high, the middle, and the low." Pale, mute, she raised her dark eyes and met his gaze. In the throbbing silence he heard his heart heavy in his breast; and now she heard her own, rapid, terrifying her, hurrying her she knew not whither. And again, trembling, she covered her eyes with her hands. "Valerie," he said, in anguish, "come back to me. I will not ask you to love me if you cannot. Only come back. I--can't--endure it--without you." There was no response. He stepped nearer, touched her hands, drew them from her face--revealing its pallid loveliness--pressed them to his lips, to his face; drew them against his own shoulders--closer, till they fell limply around his neck. She uttered a low cry: "Louis!" Then: "It--it is all over--with us," she faltered. "I--had never thought of you--this way." "Can you think of me this way, now?" "I--can't help it." "Dearest--dearest--" he stammered, and kissed her unresponsive lips, her throat, her hair. She only gazed silently at the man whose arms held her tightly imprisoned. Under the torn lace and silk one bare shoulder glimmered; and he kissed it, touched the pale veins with his lips, drew the arm from his neck and kissed elbow, wrist, and palm, and every slender finger; and still she looked at him as though dazed. A lassitude, heavy, agreeable to endure, possessed her. She yielded to the sense of fatigue--to the confused sweetness that invaded her; every pulse in her body beat its assent, every breath consented. "Will you try to care for me, Valerie?"