"Jim, I _can’t_ tell him. I’m _afraid_! ... Something happened once.... I was scarcely eighteen——" She suddenly clung to him, pressing her face convulsively against his shoulder. He could feel the shiver passing over her. "Tell me," he said. "Not now.... There doesn’t seem to be any way of letting you understand.... I was not yet eighteen. I never dreamed of—of love—between you and me.... And Oswald fascinated me. He does now. He always will. There is something about him that draws me, influences me, stirs me deeply—deeply——" She turned, looked at him, flung one arm around his neck: "Will you let me tell you this and still understand? It’s a—a different kind of affection.... But it’s deep, powerful—there are bonds that hold me—that I can’t break—dare not.... Always he was attractive to me—a strange, sensitive, unhappy boy.... And then—something happened." "Will you tell me what?" "Oh, Jim, it involves a question of honour.... I can’t betray confidence.... Let me tell you something. Did you know that Oswald, ever since you and he were boys together, cared more for your good opinion than for anything else in the world?" "That’s strange." "_He_ is strange. He has told me that, as a boy, one of the things that most deeply hurt him was that he was never invited to your house. And I can see that the fact that dad never took any notice of his father mortified him bitterly." "What has this to do with you and me, Steve?" "A great deal, unhappily. The seeds of tragedy lay in the boy’s soul of Oswald Grismer—a tender sensitiveness almost girlish, which he concealed by assertiveness and an apparent callous disregard of opinion; a pride so deep that in the shock of injury it became morbid.... But, Jim, deep in that unhappy boy’s soul lay also nobler qualities—blind loyalty, the generosity that costs something—the tenderness that renounces.... Oh, I know—I know. I was only a girl and I didn’t understand. I was fascinated by the golden, graceful youth of him—thrilled by the deeper glimpse of that mystery which attracts all women—the veiled unhappiness of a man’s secret soul.... That drew me; the man, revealed, held me.... I have told you that I never dreamed there was any question about you. I was obsessed, wrapped up in this man so admired, so talented, so utterly misunderstood by all the world excepting me. It almost intoxicated me to know that I alone knew him—that I alone was qualified to understand, sympathize, advise, encourage, rebuke this strange, inexplicable golden figure about whom and whose rising talent the world of art was gossiping and guessing all around me." After a long silence he said: "Is that all you have to tell me?"