I grasped the fact then that I had lost something about Hugh, and did my best to catch up with it. "I don't mean to, if either of my conditions is fulfilled. You heard what they were." "Oh, but if I were you I wouldn't make them. That's where I think you're wrong. If you love him--" "I couldn't steal him from his family, even if I loved him." "Oh, but it wouldn't be stealing. When two people love each other there's nothing else to think about." "And yet that might sometimes be dangerous doctrine." "If there was never any danger there'd never be any courage. And courage is one of the finest things in life." "Yes, of course; but even courage can carry one very far." "Nothing can carry us so far as love. I see that now. It's why I'm anxious about poor Hugh. I--I know a man who--who loves a woman whom he--he couldn't marry, and--" She caught herself up. "I'm fond of Hugh, you see, even though he doesn't like me. I wish he understood, that they all understood--that--that it isn't my fault. If I could have had my way--" She righted herself here with a slight change of tense. "If I could have my way, Hugh would marry the woman he's in love with and who's in love with him." I tried to enroll her decisively on my side. "So that you don't agree with Mr. Brokenshire." Her immediate response was to color with a soft, suffused rose-pink like that of the inside of shells. Her eyes grew misty with a kind of helplessness. She looked at me imploringly, and looked away. One might have supposed that she was pleading with me to be let off answering. Nevertheless, when she spoke at last, her words brought me to a new phase of her self-revelation. "Why aren't you afraid of him?" "Oh, but I am." "Yes, but not like--" Again she saved herself. "Yes, but not like--so many people. You may be afraid of him inside, but you fight." "Any one fights for right." There was a repetition of the wistful smile, a little to the left corner of the mouth. "Oh, do they? I wish I did. Or rather I wish I had." "It's never too late," I declared, with what was meant to be encouragement. There was a queer little gleam in her eye, like that which comes into the pupil of a startled bird. "So I've heard some one else say. I suppose it's true--but it frightens me." I was quite strangely uneasy. Hints of her story came back to me, but I had never heard it completely enough to be able to piece the fragments together. It was new for me to imagine myself called on to protect any one--I needed protection so much for myself!--but I was moved with a protective instinct toward her. It was rather ridiculous, and yet it was so. "Only one must be sure one is right before one fights, mustn't one?" was all I could think of saying. She responded dreamily, looking seaward. "Don't you think there may be worse things than wrong?"