Then physical need conquered me. I could not face the thought of another day’s starvation. I sat up, and held out my hands. “If you will be so cruel,” I said. “Let me have it, please.” He gave it to me at once, stood by with a sort of sombre smile on his face, while I appeased my ravenous first hunger. “That’s right,” he said. “Are you better? There was room for improvement.” I did not answer. “Well, are you quite good now?” said he. My throat began to swell again. “You treat me like a child!” I cried. “Yes,” he said, “because it’s only little girls who quarrel with their bread and butter.” “Haven’t you punished me enough already?” I said. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But, if more’s wanted, I hope it will be with less smart to myself.” I laughed through my tears. “O, I mean nothing sentimental,” said he; “but only that, _my_ room being next to yours, and the common ladder to both conducting through _your_ room, I’ve been forced by your wilfulness to sleep all night below in a chair. But we’ll remedy that somehow with a screen, and so settle any question of precedence in going to bed.” I stared at him, half fearfully. “Why have you brought me here?” I whispered. “What! again?” he said, shaking a finger at me. “It seems, for no reason but to humble and abuse me. I was happy with poor Gogo.” “Damn Gogo!” he said, in such a sudden heat that it brought a cry from me. Then, all in an instant, to my amazement and distress, he had fallen on his knees beside the bed. “What is Gogo to you, or you to him?” he cried, in a low, intense voice. “Has he ruined himself for you as I have done? Has he risked death, destruction, madness? pined for you in dreams, and plotted to gain you waking, as I have ever since you, a child, took my reason by storm, and bound it to you by golden chains?” His fervour and passion quite overwhelmed me. I could only cower, trembling, before him. “What do you mean?” I whispered. “How have you ruined yourself--for my sake?” He caught at my hands. He was breathing fast and thick. “O, child, you don’t know!” he cried--“the peril that has dogged you--the love that has foreseen and provided--not for a moment the truth of how my heart bled to hurt you. Now--now! O, will you not come to me and hear?” “No,” I whispered, in a hurry of emotion. “For pity’s sake leave me! I will come to you presently: I will, indeed.” He rose to his feet at once, commanding himself. He was all changed--softened and transfigured. I felt swimming on the edge of a whirlpool--fighting giddily against some helpless, rapturous plunge to which I was being urged. I longed only for breathing time--some little space to be alone in. He went and stood by the trap: “I will wait for you,” he said hoarsely; and so descended, closed it behind him, and was gone.