"Yes.... Do you feel restless? Do you want to lift your head?" She moved a little but made no reply. He could see only the full, smooth curve of her cheek against his shoulder. It was rather colourless. "I believe you are worn out," he said. "I have not rested for weeks." "On account of that Trust business?" "Yes.... But I was tired before that--I had done too much--lived too much--and I've felt as though I were being hunted for so long.... And then--I was unhappy about you." "Because I had joined in the hunt," he said. "You were different, but--you made me feel that way, too--a little----" "I understand now." "Do you really?" "Yes. It's been a case of men following, crowding after you, urging, importuning you to consider their desires--to care for them in their own way--all sorts I suppose, sad and sentimental, eager and exacting, head-long and boisterous--all at you constantly to give them what is not in you to give--what has never been awakened--what lies stunned, crippled, perhaps mangled in its sleep----" "Killed," she whispered. "Perhaps." He raised his eyes and looked absently out across the sparkling water. Sunlight slanted on his shoulder and her hair, gilding the nape of her white neck where the hair grew blond and fine as a child's. And like a child, still confused by memories of past terror, partly quieted yet still sensitive to every sound or movement, Strelsa lay close to the arm that sheltered her, thinking, wondering that she could endure it, and all the while conscious that the old fear of him was no longer there. "Do you--know about me?" she asked in a still, low voice. "About the past?" "About my marriage." "Yes." "Everything?" "Some things." "You know what the papers said?" "Yes.... Don't speak of it--unless you care to, Strelsa." "I want to.... Do you know this is the first time?" "Is it?" "The first time I have ever spoken of it to anybody.... As long as my mother lived I did not once speak of it to her." She rested in silence for a while, then: "Could I tell you?" "My dear, my dear!--of course you can." "I--it's been unsaid so long--there was nobody to tell it to. I've done my best to forget it--and for days I seem to forget it. But sometimes when I wake at night it is there--the horror of it--the terror sinking deeper into my breast.... I was very young. You knew that?" "Yes." "You knew my mother had very slender means?" "Yes." "I wouldn't have cared; I was an imaginative child--and could have lived quite happy with my fancies on very, very little.... I was a sensitive and affectionate child--inclined to be demonstrative. You wouldn't believe it, would you?" "I can understand it."