"I'll tell you," he answered, with a smile which concealed dark hints. "You must learn to lead another life at the same time as this one--a life that belongs to you alone ... you and a few choice friends. Do you understand? You must do what a Frenchman once advised: lay out a secret garden, in which you tend in peace all your favourite thoughts and wishes. Above all, the things that are forbidden, and which you have privily gathered together.... Do you understand?" "All forbidden things have brought me unhappiness," she said hesitatingly. "You mean that the law that forbids them has made you unhappy," he replied; "it's not easy to distinguish between the two. At all events, believe this, my dear child: that until we make self-culture a religion, till we have erased the little word 'duty' from our vocabulary, we are not on the right road. We are simply bruising our feet by stumbling over the _debris_ with which others block our way under the pretext of making it smooth for us." "But sometimes they do make it smooth," she answered, thinking of all the benefits she had received at Richard's hands. He smiled at her with indulgent pity. "You seem to be suffering from a sickness that I call 'chain-madness,'" he said. "What is that?" Lilly asked again, seized with a dismayed suspicion that he possessed some occult power, and that he divined the shameful part certain chains had played in her life. "It is said," he continued, "that slaves who have worked in the galleys for years, when they are liberated, miss their chains, and complain loudly that their legs and arms feel as if they were chopped off.... Your beautiful arms, dear lady, were made to stretch upwards. Why don't you exercise them more?" "And my long legs were made for running away," she supplemented with a tortured laugh, "Only, where am I to run to? that is the question." "Why be in such a hurry and talk of running away yet?" he asked, stroking the hand lying in his arm, as if he were talking to a child, "You'd only run into the arms of another so-called 'duty.' First, you must acquire inward freedom first you must forget how to be at the beck and call of those who themselves should be under command." "Teach me the way," she burst out. "I will lend you a few books," he said, as if deliberating.... "Books that will lead you back to yourself. Tomorrow morning I will----" At this moment they were separated. That night Lilly, when in bed, lay with folded hands smiling up at the ceiling. Was she not once more ascending to the heights? * * * * * The next day, as the time for his call drew near, she was overcome by a new dread. She was afraid of him, of Richard, of herself. This would be the first visit she had received in secret, the first to break up the tranquillity of her home. So, when she beheld him get out of a cab with several books under his arm, she ran to give instructions not to let him in.