"What is strange?" asked Jeff, with a kindly note she found reassuring. "You and me," said Esther, "standing here, when--I don't believe you were going to speak." Her poor little smile looked piteous to him and the lift of her brows. Jeff was sorry for her, sorry for them both. At that moment he was not summoning energy to distrust her, and this was as she hoped. "I'm sorry, Esther," he said impulsively. "I did mean to speak. It wasn't that. I only don't mean to make you--in other folks' eyes, you know--seem to be having anything to do with me when--when you don't want to." "When I don't want to!" Esther repeated. There was musing in the soft voice, a kind of wonder. "It's an infernal shame," said Jeff. He was glad to tell her he hated the privation she had to bear of having cast him off and yet facing her broken life without him. "I know what kind of time you have as well as you could tell me. You've got Madame Beattie quartered on you. There's grandmother upstairs. No comfort in her. No companionship. I've often thought you don't go out as much as you might for fear of meeting me. You needn't feel that. If I see it's going to happen I can save you that, at least." Esther stood looking up at him, her lips parted, as if she drank what he had to say through them, and drank it thirstily. "How good you are!" she said. "O Jeff, how good! When I've--" There she paused, still watching him. But Esther had the woman's instinctive trick of being able to watch accurately while she did it passionately. Jeff flushed to his hair, but her cleverness did not lead her to the springs of his emotion. He was ashamed, not of her, but of himself. "You're off," he said, "all wrong. I do want to save you from this horrible mix-up I've made for you. But I'm not good, Esther. I'm not the faithful chap it makes me seem. I'm different. You wouldn't know me. I don't believe we ever knew each other very well." Something like terror came into her beautiful eyes. Was he, that inner terror asked her, trying to explain that she had lost him? Although she might not want him, she had always thought he would be there. "You mean--" she began, and strove to keep a grip on herself and decide temperately whether this would be best to say. But some galled feeling got the better of her. The smart was too much. Hurt vanity made her wince and cry out with the passion of a normal jealousy. "You mean," she continued, "you are in love with another woman." It was a hit. He had deserved it, he knew, and he straightened under it. Let him not, his alarmed senses told him, even think of Lydia, lest these cruelly clever eyes see Lydia in his, Lydia in his hurried breath, even if he could keep Lydia from his tongue.