"Perhaps you _are_ dreaming me!" she smiled, "Dreaming the woman you think I am. And--you're not to do _that_! My hands only!" "Yet you said you cared! You said you'd never felt for any man as you felt when our eyes first met." "Ah, I said that when you'd confessed doubting me, and begged forgiveness, and vowed that nothing on earth or in heaven--or the other place--could ever make you doubt again. I owed you some confession in return." "Then it _was_ true?" "Yes, it was true----" "And is still?" "But--of course! I do not change. Yet we are to be friends and nothing more until all is made clear--until even your cousin believes in me and doesn't think you'd be better dead than loving Lyda Pavoya. If that day could ever come!" "It will come--soon. Oh, Lyda, remember that first night--at your house. You let me hold you in my arms then." "But that was as a _friend_. You understood, I know! I was so stirred, so hard pressed, I wanted protection from someone sincere. And you were the sincerest man I ever saw." "Yes, I did understand. I do now. And--I won't bother you, Lyda--though it's hard work, this friendship business to a man who worships a beautiful woman as I worship you. But it's a bargain: friendship till--the day. May it be to-morrow!" "Amen!" she echoed, with one of her fleeting smiles that came so seldom. "Now let us talk not of ourselves but of your cousin. We ought to have begun with her!" "No!" "Yes. Because there may be danger. I'll tell you quickly all I know. You have met a friend--an acquaintance--of mine, the Comtesse de Saintville?" "Oh, yes--wife of a diplomat of sorts, isn't she? I've heard you were intimate."