“Do you know me well? Does any of us know another well? Don’t we, most of us, drift through life with our eyes half closed, ignorant of our aims, ignorant of our very natures, till some shock comes to awaken us, and in the moment of trial we find out for the first time who and what we really are?” A subtle instinct told him, before he had finished speaking, that his words were being eagerly followed by the girl who sat on his right hand. On the marchioness they fell with something of the effect of a cold spray. She shivered and got up. “Ah, yes, of course, all that is very true, no doubt,” she murmured, hastily. “But I must really be going back to look after the people.” She turned a feline glance on Belle. “I wouldn’t sit out here too long if I were you, Miss Yorke; you may catch cold.” “Thank you; I am not afraid of that,” was the quiet answer. The marchioness turned her eyes from one to the other, pursed up her lips with severity, and reluctantly retreated. Hammond watched her exit with a sarcastic smile. “I am afraid the marchioness believes I have been drinking,” he observed. The cynicism jarred on Belle as harshly as the seriousness had jarred on the marchioness. There is no woman who can respond to a man through all his moods, not even she who loves him best. “I wonder how much truth there is in what you said just now?” Hammond turned and fixed an earnest gaze on her. He saw her for the first time in his experience with a troubled brow, but he never guessed the cause. There is no man who can follow a woman through all her moods, not even he who loves her best. “That is what I wanted to ask you,” he said, in answer to her question. “We two have known each other for some time, haven’t we; but how much do I know of you, or you of me?” Belle felt what was coming. She saw it in his eye, she heard it in his voice. Desperately she resolved to meet it half-way. “I have been finding that out this evening. Since I have come here I have understood for the first time what you are and what I am. Mr. Hammond, after this evening we must not meet again.” “Belle! Why do you say that?” There was a note of anguish in his voice. He had been fighting a battle with himself all this time. It had never occurred to him that there might be another to overcome besides. She looked him steadily in the face. “Why do you call me Belle?” “I thought we were friends,” he said. But he blushed as he said it. “What kind of friends? Would your friendship with Lady Victoria allow you to call her by her Christian name? Don’t you see that the difference between her and me makes our friendship impossible?” “Don’t you trust me, then?” asked the man. “You have no right to ask me for my trust. You and I belong to different worlds. Where there is no equality there can be no friendship. It would have been better if we had never met.”