It was a rushing, whirling confusion and through it his arm led her, happier in his secure guard than in anything else under heaven. Regent Street was quiet and softly coloured above the maelstrom into which it flowed. He suddenly began: "I've got something I want to tell you--something I've wanted to tell you for a long time. You must have seen----" Her voice coming to her as though it were a stranger's, said, "Yes." At the same time, looking about her, almost unconsciously, she registered her memory of the place and the hour--the shelving street, rising with its lamps reflected, before them, a bank of dark cloud that had suddenly appeared and hung, sinister against the night sky, behind the white houses, a slip of a silver moon surveying this same cloud with anxiety because it knew that soon its darkness would engulf it. "I've wanted to tell you," he began again, "this long time. It's needed courage, and things during this last year have rather taken my courage away from me." "You needn't be afraid," she said with a little laugh. "You ought to know by this time that you can tell me anything, Mr. Breton." "Yes, I do know," he said earnestly. "Of course I know. What you've been to me all this last year--I simply can't think how I'd have kept up if it hadn't been for you." "Oh, please," she said. "No, but it's true. Even with you it's been a bit of a fight." He paused. She saw that the black cloud had already swallowed up the moon and that a few raindrops were beginning to fall. He went on: "You must have seen that all this time something's been helping me. I've never spoken to you, but you've known----" The moment had come. Her heart had surely stopped its beat and she was glad, in her happiness, of the rain that was now falling more swiftly. "I don't know--" he stammered a little. "It's so difficult. It's come to this, that I must speak to somebody and you're the only person, the only person. But even with one's best friends--one knows them so slightly--after all, perhaps, you'll think it very wrong----" At that word it was as though a great hammer had, of a sudden, hit her heart and slain it. The street, shining with the rain, rose ever so little and bent towards her. "Wrong?" she said, looking up at him. "Yes. I don't know about your standards--you've been always so kind to me and put up with my faults and so I've been encouraged----" Her relief should have awaked the gods of Olympus with its triumph. "I've meant everything I've ever said----"