"From the very beginning," she said, "you have never once disappointed me." "What!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Never," she repeated. "Why--why, I got in wrong the very first time!" he said. "You mean that wager we made?" "Yes." "But you behaved like a good sportsman." "Well, I wasn't exactly a bounder. But you were annoyed." She smiled: "Was I?" "You seemed to be." "Yet I sat in a corner behind some palms with you until daylight." They looked at each other and laughed over the reminiscence. Then he said: "I _did_ disappoint you when you found out what sort of a man I was." "No, you didn't." "I proved it, too," he said under his breath. Her lips were set firmly, almost primly, but she blushed. "You meant to be nice to me," she said. "You meant to do me honour." "The honour of offering you such a man as I was," he said with smiling bitterness. "Rix! _I_ was the fool--the silly little prig! I have blushed and blushed to remember how I behaved; how I snubbed you and--good heavens!--even lectured and admonished you!--How I ran away from you with all the self-possession and _savoir-faire_ of a country schoolgirl! What on earth you thought of me in those days I dread to surmise----" "But Strelsa, what was there to do except what you did?" "If I'd known anything I could have thanked you for caring that way for me and dismissed you as a friend instead of fleeing as though you had affronted me----" "I _did_ affront you." "You didn't intend to.... It would have been easy enough to tell you that I liked you--but not that way.... And all those miserable, lonely, unhappy months could have been spared me----" "Were _you_ unhappy?" "Didn't you know it?" "I never dreamed you were." "Well, I was--thinking of what I had done to you.... And all those men bothering me, every moment, and everybody at me to marry everybody else--and all I wanted was to be friends with _you_!... I wasn't sure of what I wanted from the very beginning, of course, but I knew it as soon as I saw you at the Bazaar again.... I was _so_ lonely, Rix----" She looked up out of clear, fearless eyes; he leaned forward and took her hands in his. "I know what you want," he said quietly. "You want my friendship and you have it--every atom of it, Strelsa. I will never overstep the borders again; I understand you thoroughly.... You know what you have done for me--what I was when you came into my life. My gratitude is a living thing. Through you, because of you, the whole unknown world--all of real life--has opened before me. You did it for me, Strelsa." "You did it for yourself and for me," she said in a low voice. "What are you trying to tell me, Rix? That _I_ did this for _you_? When it is you--it was you from the first--it has always been you who led, who awakened first, who showed courage and common sense and patience and the cheerful wisdom which--which saved me----"