Jill stirred restlessly. She nodded her head, reclasping her hands in her old attitude round her knees as though it, somehow, nerved her to listen. So he began. At the very beginning; with his interview in Harley Street and the mystery of his "double heart." Jill's grey eyes went wide with wonder. But he went on without a break. He told her of Fantine and Cydonia; of his brief engagement with the latter, and his subsequent disillusion. For a certain reason of his own he cut out both the time and place, avoiding mention of his inheritance, merely stating that he had been jilted. Had he been watching Jill's face and seen her indignation rise, flooding the clear skin with colour, his story might have been abridged. But he still stared out of the window, far from the girl's secret thought. ("How dared this creature throw him over! a silly, brainless..." Jill choked.) For now he came to a harder part: that year of light adventures abroad. But he forged through it ruthlessly, hurting himself and her. This threatened Jill's ideals, dragging him out of his secret shrine. Peter, no longer her childish idol, but a man, made of baser metal. Still, she sat without movement, rather white, her lips compressed. She did him the justice in her heart to respect him for his honesty. But it made a difference even then; though later it strengthened the reason why, loving her, he had bound himself to silence for a term of probation. It accounted, too, for his withdrawal from her society since the day he had rescued her and brought her from Cluar. And her secret fear was slain for good. The fear that had haunted her proud spirit that, during her brief unconsciousness, the disarray of her torn dress had betrayed the little "double heart!" That gift of his, carelessly offered, lightly accepted, which had lain, day after day, and night after night, on the faithful living heart beneath... So at last he came to the end; his strange experience in the train and the doctor's verdict; the second one, that had overthrown its shadowy rival. That bogey was dead for good. Jill breathed a sigh of relief. It was like a page from a Fairy book, the curse some malignant witch had laid. "So I haven't a double heart at all..." McTaggart smiled wearily, "not even one I can call my own. It's yours, now--what's left of it!" He stole a glance at the girl before him. Her face was pale; her hands, still clasped, suggested that she held herself, by a strong effort, cool and apart. "That's what seems so hard," said Jill. "We give ... _all_ to the man we love--and he gives us ... 'what's left.'"