Pendrel weighed it. "Isn't there a danger that you'll take care _not_ to find you want to?" "Certainly a danger. I can do anything rather than want to. Anything, that is--I again promise you--short of marrying to save myself. It will take a miracle to move me, but if I _am_ moved--moved from within and by something now incalculable--you may count on me. That," Aurora said, "is the meaning of my talking of my honour." "And what's the meaning," Ralph asked, "of your talking of mine?" "Why, that I take in the same way my chance of yours." She paused--he must understand. This took him indeed no great time. "You'll have me if I do come?" She hesitated again but an instant. "If you come on your honour. If you come----!" But it was as if she couldn't put it. He tried to help her. "Without regret?" Ah this wasn't good enough. "If you come with desire." Ralph stared. "How in the world can I come without it if I come for you?" She used again her large ease. "That won't help you if you're loyal." "Loyal?" he wondered. "To the real truth. To your genius." "Oh I'll take care of my genius!" "You will," she presently returned, "if you remember well this: that if you do rejoin me you engage to me to stay." "Very good--I shall remember it well." "Good-bye then," said Aurora Coyne. She saw him to the door, where he paused for a last light. "Does that mean you hold you're safe?" "It means that I hold you are," she answered as she turned away. BOOK SECOND It was not till he reached the street that he took in all she meant--as in particular by those last words. Without sense or sight, on leaving the house, he turned mechanically to the left and went blankly before him. This was not his way home, but he had no thought for ways. He moved simply because if he didn't there was nothing for him but to sit down on the first other doorstep. He felt mainly a great weakness--felt almost nothing else; yet it was a weakness that, oddly, sustained him for a long stretch, carried him up to the Park, determined his passing in, and then made him proceed unheedingly from the nearer to the further end. It was only on reaching the distant limit that he so much as noted a bench. The one he noted, however, he quickly sank upon; and little by little, thereafter, he gained a second consciousness. This was a perception of the beauty of the day, the mildest mood of March. The windless air, charged with spring, was like a brimming cup held still. The weather was divine, but the person supposed by him an hour before as dear to him as life had since then turned him out into the world. Well, the world was there to take him. Yes, he increasingly felt, he was there and his bench, placed near the top of the spread of a great alley, seemed to give him a general view of it. The object indeed after a while most distinct in this view was Ralph Pendrel himself, who rose there conspicuous and held our young friend's eyes. What marked him most was that he was a man humiliated.