And then he realized that a worse thing had befallen. He had no voice. It had gone. He knew that, try he never so hard to speak, he would not be able to utter a word. A nightmare feeling of unreality came upon him. Had he ever spoken? Had he ever done anything but sit dumbly on that rock, looking at those sea gulls out in the water? He shot another swift glance at Betty, and a thrill went through him. There were tears in her eyes. The next moment--the action was almost automatic--his left hand was clasping her right, and he was moving along the rock to her side. She snatched her hand away. His brain, ransacked for the third time, yielded a single word. "Betty!" She got up quickly. In the confused state of his mind, John found it necessary if he were to speak at all, to say the essential thing in the shortest possible way. Polished periods are not for the man who is feeling deeply. He blurted out, huskily, "I love you!" and finding that this was all that he could say, was silent. Even to himself the words, as he spoke them, sounded bald and meaningless. To Betty, shaken by her encounter with Mr. Scobell, they sounded artificial, as if he were forcing himself to repeat a lesson. They jarred upon her. "Don't!" she said sharply. "Oh, don't!" Her voice stabbed him. It could not have stirred him more if she had uttered a cry of physical pain. "Don't! I know. I've been told." "Been told?" She went on quickly. "I know all about it. My stepfather has just told me. He said--he said you were his--" she choked--"his hired man; that he paid you to stay here and advertise the Casino. Oh, it's too horrible! That it should be you! You, who have been--you can't understand what you--have been to me--ever since we met; you couldn't understand. I can't tell you--a sort of help--something--something that--I can't put it into words. Only it used to help me just to think of you. It was almost impersonal. I didn't mind if I never saw you again. I didn't expect ever to see you again. It was just being able to think of you. It helped--you were something I could trust. Something strong--solid." She laughed bitterly. "I suppose I made a hero of you. Girls are fools. But it helped me to feel that there was one man alive who--who put his honor above money--" She broke off. John stood motionless, staring at the ground. For the first time in his easy-going life he knew shame. Even now he had not grasped to the full the purport of her words. The scales were falling from his eyes, but as yet he saw but dimly. She began to speak again, in a low, monotonous voice, almost as if she were talking to herself. She was looking past him, at the gulls that swooped and skimmed above the glittering water. "I'm so tired of money--money--money. Everything's money. Isn't there a man in the world who won't sell himself? I thought that you--I suppose I'm stupid. It's business, I suppose. One expects too much." She looked at him wearily. "Good-by," she said. "I'm going."