But he broke in upon her: “Oh, don't talk to me of Mrs. Erwin! It was you I wanted to see. Are _you_ well? Are you alive? Do you--” He stopped as precipitately as he began; and after another hopeless pause, he went on piteously: “I don't know where to begin. I ought to have been here five days ago. I don't know what you think of me, or whether you have thought of me at all; and before I can ask I must tell you why I wanted to come then, and why I come now, and why I think I must have come back from the dead to see you. You are all the world to me, and have been ever since I saw you. It seems a ridiculously unnecessary thing to say, I have been looking and acting and living it so long; but I say it, because I choose to have you know it, whether you ever cared for me or not. I thought I was coming here to explain why I had not come sooner, but I needn't do that unless--unless--” He looked at her where she still stood aloof, and he added: “Oh, answer me something, for pity's sake! Don't send me away without a word. There have been times when you wouldn't have done that!” “Oh, I _did_ care for you!” she broke out. “You know I did--” He was instantly across the room, beside her. “Yes, yes, I know it!” But she shrank away. “You tried to make me believe you cared for me, by everything you could do. And I did believe you then; and yes, I believed you afterwards, when I didn't know what to believe. You were the one true thing in the world to me. But it seems that you didn't believe it yourself.” “That I didn't believe it myself? That I--I don't know what you mean.” “You took a week to think it over! I have had a week, too, and I have thought it over, too. You have come too late.” “Too late? You don't, you can't, mean--Listen to me, Lydia; I want to tell you--” “No, there is nothing you can tell me that would change me. I know it, I understand it all.” “But you don't understand what kept me.” “I don't wish to know what made you break your word. I don't care to know. I couldn't go back and feel as I did to you. Oh, that's gone! It isn't that you did not come--that you made me wait and suffer; but you knew how it would be with me after I got here, and all the things I should find out, and how I should feel! And you stayed away! I don't know whether I can forgive you, even; oh, I'm afraid I don't; but I can never care for you again. Nothing but a case of life and death--” “It was a case of life and death!” Lydia stopped in her reproaches, and looked at him with wistful doubt, changing to a tender fear. “Oh, have you been hurt? Have you been sick?” she pleaded, in a breaking voice, and made some unconscious movement toward him. He put out his hand, and would have caught one of hers, but she clasped them in each other. “No, not I,--Dunham--” “Oh!” said Lydia, as if this were not at all enough.