With the sense of hot pursuit that sprang up in him he felt himself as ruthless as a boy, pushing through the thickets of reticence, through the very supplications of generosity, to the nest of her secret. It was not joy he sought, but his own pain, and to see it clearly, finally. He must see it. And when Eppie, her back to him, leaning her arm on the mantel and looking down into the empty cavern of the great chimney-place, answered, accepting all his implications, “Gavan hasn’t found any happiness,” he said, “He finds all that he asks for.” It was as if he had wrenched away the last bough from the nest, and the words gave him, with their breathless determination, an ugly feeling of cruel, breaking malignity. Eppie’s face was still turned from him so that he could not see how she bore the rifling, but in the same dulled and gentle voice she answered, “He doesn’t ask what you do.” At that Grainger’s deepest resentment broke out. “Doesn’t ask your love? No, I suppose not. The man’s a mollusk,--a wretched, diseased creature.” He had struck at last a flash from her persistent gentleness. She faced him, and he saw that she tried to smile over deep anger. “You say that because Gavan is not in love with me? It is a sick fancy that sees every man not in love with me as sick too.” She had taken up a weapon at last, she really challenged him; and he felt, full on that quivering nerve of dread, that she defended at once herself and the man she loved from her own and from his unveiling. It made a sort of rage rise in him. “A man who cares for you,--a man who depends on you,--as he does,--a man whom you care for,--so much,--is a bloodless vampire if he doesn’t--respond.” When he had driven the knife in like that, straight up to the hilt, he hardly knew whether his anger or his adoration were the greater; for, as if over a disabling wound, she bent her head in utter surrender, quite still for a moment, and then saying only, while she looked at him as if more sorry for him than for herself, “You hurt me, Jim.” Tears of fury stood in his eyes. “You hurt, too. My love for you--a disease. _My_ love, Eppie!” “Forgive me.” “Forgive you! I worship everything you say or do!” “It was that it hurt too much to see--what you did, with your eyes.” “Then--then--you don’t deny it,--if I have eyes to see, he too must see--how much you care?” “I don’t deny it.” “And if I have courage enough to ask it, you have courage enough to answer me? You love him, Eppie?” He had come to her, his eyes threatening her, beseeching her, adoring her, all at once. She saw it all--all that he felt, and the furious pity that was deeper than his own deep pain. She could resent nothing, deny nothing. As she had said, he was so near. She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping him from her, yet accepting him as near, and then all that she found to say--but it was in a voice that brought a rapt pallor to his face--was, “Dear Jim.”