Just then, as we both sat silent, a fearful and torturing memory came to me. One phrase--just a short phrase from the book of ballads which I had read and reread during my convalescence, until they seemed to form part of the very atmosphere of my existence, suddenly detached itself from the rest--I heard it within myself as if another than myself had uttered it. It was a line in the legend of The Lord of Burleigh. The Lord of Burleigh is speaking to a peasant girl, who is the prettiest and most modest girl in the village, and what he says is, _There is no one in the world whom I love like thee._ To be sure, I should never in the world have spoken those words aloud; I should even have closed my lips tight to make sure of not uttering them. But I felt them as living things, and they thrilled through me. Now I discovered their prodigious meaning. How could one say such words to some one who was not of one’s family, and whom one hardly knew? _No one in the world_! What about father--and mother? I dimly perceived the sacrilegious power of love, and while I was leaning over that abyss, Nazzarena, usually so grave, was laughing and showing her teeth. One of the bronzed men of the troop passed, and stopped before us, scrutinising us. Then suddenly he knocked our two heads together, uttering in his jargon a word or two that I did not understand. The touch of her cheek burned me, and violently pulling myself free I felt myself reddening to the very roots of my hair. She only laughed the more. “What did he say?” I stammered, tossed between anger and a totally new emotion. “Oh, nothing,” said she. “That you were my little lover.” “I!” I protested. “What an idea!” I could not consent that it should be possible. The love that one expressed must lose all importance. And what next? That way everything would be over. Surely, for love to be love one must keep it to oneself and it must hurt.... III THE PLOT HOW was it that no one noticed, when I returned to the house, that I had suddenly changed and grown? I was almost scandalised at their blindness. “Well, here you are!” observed my father, who was beginning to be uneasy about my absences. Aunt Deen ran after me to make me put on another coat, more obviously worn. I had hastily slipped on my best, for my visit to Nazzarena. It may have been the memorable olive-green of my convalescence, at last become better adapted to my size after three or four years of growth, unless it had already been retired to a clothes press, in camphor and naphtha, until such time as James should grow to it. I commanded not the slightest respect, although the entire household ought to have been struck with my changed countenance. Instead of thinking only of my adventure, which indeed I could not quite understand, I was vexed with the familiarity with which I was treated.