"I've told you this before. I talked to you about it when you were here last. But since then he has become much worse and I am afraid that anything may happen. I have no one to go to. It is killing my mother, and then--you were a friend of his." "I hope that I am now." "That is the horrible part of it. But it seems now that all this agitation, this trouble, is directed against you." "Against me" "Yes, the other evening he spoke about you--here--furiously. He said you must never come here again, that I must never speak to you again. He said that you had done dreadful things. And then when I asked him he could not tell me anything. He seemed--and you must look on it in that light, Mr. Dune--as though he were not in the least responsible for what he said. I'm afraid he is very, very ill. He is dreadfully unhappy, and yet he can explain nothing. I too have been very unhappy, and mother, because we love him." "If he wishes that I should not come here again---" Olva began. "But he is not responsible. He really does not know what he is doing. He never had the smallest trouble that he did not confide it to me, and now---" "I have noticed, of course," Olva said "that lately his manner to me has been strange. I would have helped him if he would let me, but he will not. He will have nothing to say to me . . . I too have been very sorry about it. I have been sorry because I am fond of Rupert, but also--there is another, stronger reason--because I love you, Margaret." As he spoke he got up and stood by her chair. He saw her take in his last words, at first with a wondering gravity, then with a sudden splendour so that light flooded her face; her arms made a little helpless gesture, and she caught his hand. He drew her up to him out of her chair; then, with a fierce passionate movement, they held one another and clung together as though in a desperate wild protest against the world. "You can't touch me now--I've got her," he seemed to fling at the blank face of the old mirror. It was his act of defiance, but through his exultation he caught the whisper--it might again have been conveyed to him through the shrill shivering notes of the "Valse Triste"--"Tell her--tell her--now. Trust her. Dear son, trust Me . . . it must be so in the end." "Now," he heard her say, "I can stand it all." "When you came into this room weeks ago," she went on, "I loved you; from the very first instant. Now I do not mind what any one can do." "I too loved you from the first instant."