"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, laughing, "that's enough, you poor child! Do you think I'd permit you to undergo the suffering necessary to the pronunciation of my name?" Amused yet resentful, perplexed, uncertain of this new phase of the man beside her, she leaned back, head slightly lowered; but her gray eyes were swiftly lifted every few moments to watch him. Suddenly she became acutely conscious of her extended arm where her hand now was lightly in touch with the rough cloth of his sleeve; and she checked a violent impulse to withdraw her hand. Then, once more, and after all these months, the same strange sensation passed through her--a thrilling consciousness of his nearness. Absolutely motionless, confused yet every instinct alert to his slightest word or movement, she sat there, gray eyes partly lowered. He neither spoke nor moved; his pleasant glance rested absently on her, then wandered toward the quiet lake; and venturing to raise her eyes she saw him smile to himself and wondered uneasily what his moment's thought might be. He said, still smiling: "What is it in that curious combination of individualities known as Strelsa Leeds, that rejects one composite specimen known to you as _Mister_ Quarren?" She smiled, uncertainly: "But I _don't_ reject you, _Mister_ Quarren." "Oh, yes, you do. I'm sensible of an occult wall between us." "How absurd. Of course there is a wall." "I've got to climb over it then----" "I don't wish you to!" "Strelsa?" "W-what?" "That wall isn't a golden one, is it?" "I--I don't know what you mean." "I mean money," he said; and she blushed from neck to hair. "Please don't say such things----" "No, I won't. Because if you cared enough for me you wouldn't let that kind of a wall remain between us----" "I ask you not to talk about such----" "You _wouldn't_," he insisted, smiling. "Nor is there now any reason why such a man as I am becoming, and ultimately will be, should not tell you that he cares----" "Please--if you please--I had rather not----" "So," he concluded, still smiling, "the matter, as it stands, is rather plain. You don't care for me enough. I love you--I don't know how much, yet. When a girl interposes such an occult barrier and a man comes slap up against it, he's too much addled to understand exactly how seriously he is in love with the unknown on the other side." He spoke in a friendly, almost impersonal way and, as though quite thoughtlessly, dropped his left hand over her right which lay extended along the back of the seat. And the contact seemed to paralyse every nerve in her body. "Because," he continued, leisurely, "the unknown does lie on the other side of that barrier--your unknown self, Strelsa--undiscovered as yet by me----" Her lips moved mechanically: "I wrote you--_told_ you what I am." "Oh, that?" He laughed: "That was a mood. I don't think you know yourself----" "I do. I _am_ what I wrote you."