Her nerves still shook under Julia's distant and delicate admonition to her to keep her head. It struck her that he was repeating the warning in a still more delicate and distant manner. She wondered was it possible that he was beginning to be afraid? Couldn't he see that he was safe with her? That they were safe with one another? What was she doing now but letting him see how safe they were? Hadn't she just given to their relations the last touch of spiritual completion? She had made a place for him where he could come and go at will, and rest without terror. Couldn't he see that she had set her house of life above all that, so high that nobody down here could see what went on up there, and wonder at his going out and coming in? Keep her head, indeed! Her untroubled and untrammeled movements on her heights proved how admirably she kept it. "You see," he continued, "it's not as if I could be always here, on the spot." His voice still sounded the distant note of warning. It told her that there was something that he wished to make _her_ see. Her best answer to that was silence, and a sincere front intimating that she saw everything, and that there was nothing to touch her in the things _he_ saw. "And as it happens" (Caldecott's voice shook a little), "I'm going away next week. I shall be away a very long time." She knew that he did not look at her now lest he should see her wince. She did not wince. "Well," said she, "I shall be here when you come back." It was then that she saw the terror in his face. "Of course," he said, "I hope--very much--you will be here." She felt that he, like Julia, was leading her to the edge of the deep dividing place, and that he paused miserably where Julia had plunged. She saw him trying to bridge the gulf, to cover it, with decent, gentle commonplaces and courtesies. Then he went away. What had she done to make him afraid of her? Or was it what she had said? The other day, before she had seen Julia, she could have said anything to him. Now it seemed there was nothing that she could say. What was it that he had seen in her? That was it. With all his wonderful comprehension he had failed her in the ultimate test--the ability to see what was in her. He had seen nothing but one thing, the thing he was accustomed to see, the material woman's passion to pursue, to make captive, to possess. He would go thinking all his life that it was she who had failed, she who, by her vulgarity, had made it impossible for him to remain her friend. She supposed she _had_ piled it up too high. It was her very defenses that had betrayed her, made her more flagrant and exposed. She bowed herself for hours to the scourging of that thought till the thought itself perished from exhaustion. She knew that it was not so. He held her higher than that.