"No; only apprehension. You know, don't you? Well, then, it is nothing; don't ask me." And, noting the quick change in his face--"No, no; it is not what you think. How quickly you are hurt! My apprehension is not about you; it concerns myself. And it is quite groundless. I know what I must do; I _know_!" she repeated bitterly. "And there will always be a straight path to the end; clear and straight, until I go out as nameless as I came in to all this.... Don't touch my hand, please.... I'm trying to think.... I can't, if we are in contact.... And you don't know who you are touching; and I can't tell you. Only two in all the world, if they are alive, could tell you. And they never will tell you--or tell me--why they left me here alone." With a little shiver she released her hand, looking straight ahead of her for a few moments, then, unconsciously up into the blue overhead. "I shall love you always," he said. "Right or wrong, always. Remember that, too, when you think of these things." She turned as though slowly aroused from abstraction, then shook her head. "It's very brave and boyish of you to be loyal--" "You speak to me as though I were not years older than you!" "I can't help it; I am old, old, sometimes, and tired of an isolation no one can break for me." "If you loved me--" "How _can_ I? You _know_ I cannot!" "Are you afraid to love me?" She blushed crimson, saying: "If I--if such a misfortune--" "Such a misfortune as your loving me?" "Yes; if it came, I would never, never admit it! Why do you say these things to me? Won't you understand? I've tried so hard--so hard to warn you!" The colour flamed in her cheeks; a sort of sweet anger possessed her. "Must I tell you more than I have told before you can comprehend the utter impossibility of any--love--between us?" His hand fell over hers and held it crushed. "Tell me no more," he said, "until you can tell me that you dare to love!" "What do you mean? Do you mean that a girl does not do a dishonourable thing because she dares not?--a sinful thing because she's afraid? If it were only that--" She smiled, breathless. "It is not fear. It is that a girl _can_ not love where love is forbidden." "And you believe that?" "Believe it!"--in astonishment. "Yes; do you believe it?" She had never before questioned it. Dazed by his impatience, dismayed, she affirmed it again, mechanically. And the first doubt entered as she spoke, confusing her, awakening a swarm of little latent ideas and misgivings, stirring memories of half-uttered sentences checked at her entrance into a room, veiled allusions, words, nods, that she remembered but had never understood. And, somehow, his question seemed a key to this cipher, innocently retained in the unseen brain-cells, stored up without suspicion--almost without curiosity.