One step and he had taken her into his arms, seeing as he did so, in a flash, the white wonder of her face; he could almost have smiled at it--divinely dull creature! Holding her closely, the white folds of the shroud-like dress crushed against his breast, his cheek upon her hair, he could not kiss her and he could not speak, and in a silence as unmistakable as word or kiss, his long embrace forgot the past and defied the future. The painful image of a bird he had once seen, wings broken, dying of a shot and feebly fluttering, came to him as he felt her stir; her hands pushing him away. "Dearest--dearest--dearest." Her effort faltered to resistless helplessness. Stooping his head he looked at her face; it wore an almost tranquil, a corpse-like look. Her eyes were closed and the eyebrows drawn up a little in a faint, fixed frown; but the childlike line of her mouth had all the sad passivity of death. Odd tremblingly kissed the gentle sternness of the lips. She loved him, but how cruel he was. "Oh, my precious," he said, "look at me. Forgive me; I love you." He had freed her hands, and she raised them and bent her face upon them. "You don't hate me for telling you the truth?" And as she made no sign: "No, no, you don't hate me; you love me and I love you. I have loved you from the beginning. Oh, my child, my child, why did you let me think you did not care? Look at me, dearest." "What have I done?" said Hilda. She still kept her face hidden in her hands. "You have done nothing; it is I, I who have done it!" "I never could have believed it of you," she said, and he felt it to be the simple statement of a fact. "O Hilda--I have only told you the truth, that is my crime." "You told me because of what I said? You love me because of what I said?" "Good God! I have been madly in love with you for months!" "For months?" she repeated dully. "For years, perhaps, who knows!" "I did not know that I--that you--" "You knew nothing, my poor angel." He enfolded her again. Her look seemed to stumble and grope for an entreaty; her very powerlessness in the grasp of her realized love enchanted him. "How base! how base!" she moaned. "Am I a cruel brute? Ah! Hilda, you love me, and I cannot help myself." "No--you cannot help yourself. I love you and I told you so." "You did not mean _this_." "I did not mean it. Oh, I trusted you. I did not doubt myself. I am wicked." The strange revulsion from her long selflessness had reached its height in poor Hilda; but, in her eyes, the discovered self was indeed wicked, a terrible revelation. Her head fell helplessly against his shoulder. "O Peter, Peter!" "What, my darling child?" "That we should be so base!" "Not _we_, Hilda. Not _you_!"