"Do you really like her?" "I was so lonely, Jeff," she pleaded. "Poor child!... Evie----" She looked quickly up at my change of tone. "What?" "I want to tell you what her object is. I don't find it easy." "What do you mean, Jeff?" she asked, strangely abruptly. "And I'm afraid you won't find it easy either." She had dropped my hand. "Jeff, what do you mean?" "I mean that she thinks she's found out--is finding out--something discreditable about me." At first I did not understand the change, almost to horror, that came into Evie's eyes. Only after a moment almost of fear of what I saw there did I fathom her thought. I don't know how men speak who have an unfaithfulness to confess to their wives, but it flashed on me that Evie actually thought it might be that--so can pure innocence and worldly experience be pierced by the same fear. "Jeff," she said faintly, her colour all gone, "don't you--haven't you--loved me?" "Loved you?" I laughed for the irony of it. "Yes, dearest," I said quietly, "I've loved you. Never fear for that. That was the beginning of it all." "The beginning?" "Of what Miss Levey thinks. Dear, could you bear to think she's right, and that I've been a blackguard?" So great was her suspense that the little sound she made was one almost of irritation. "Oh, Jeff, say what you've got to say----" "It's why I spoke of causing pain to Kitty Windus----" "Oh, you're cruel----!" I moistened my lips. "Very well...." Locked up in my private desk, written in Pitman's shorthand, there lies a full statement of that curious affair of mine with Kitty Windus; but I am not going to quote from that statement here. So long as it is understood that that heartless thing had existed side by side with a love for Evie that had never for a moment wavered, that is all that matters. I had now no longer a thought for the undesirableness, the danger even, of a meeting between Evie and Kitty; risky though that would be, I now saw nothing save that we were reunited, and that we could only remain so by passing on to her a portion of my shame. If you don't see this you are lucky. Your life has trifles in it. You can buy dining-tables, and use or reject the familiarity of Christian names. You have not had to carry upon your shoulders a weight greater than a man can support, nor to choose which portion you are to leave on the road behind you unless your back is to break. You have not known the conclusion to which--but you shall hear the conclusion to which I have been driven all in good time. In the meantime, sparing myself in her eyes no more than I am sparing myself in yours now, I told her how little she had ever had to fear from Kitty Windus.