"And now--with all these madly inked pages scattered across my desk, I draw toward me another sheet--the last I have still unstained; to ask at last the question which I have shrunk from through all these pages--and for which these pages alone were written: "_What_ do you think of me? Asking you, shows how much I care; dread of your opinion has turned me coward until this last page. _What_ do you think of me? I am perfectly miserable about Boots, but that is partly fright--though I know I am safe enough with such a man. But what sets my cheeks blazing so that I cannot bear to face my own eyes in the mirror, is the fear of what _you_ must think of me in the still, secret places of that heart of yours, which I never, never understood. ALIXE." It was a week before he sent his reply--although he wrote many answers, each in turn revised, corrected, copied, and recopied, only to be destroyed in the end. But at last he forced himself to meet truth with truth, cutting what crudity he could from his letter: "You ask me what I think of you; but that question should properly come from me. What do _you_ think of a man who exhorts and warns a woman to stand fast, and then stands dumb at the first impact of temptation? "A sight for gods and men--that man! Is there any use for me to stammer out trite phrases of self-contempt? The fact remains that I am unfit to advise, criticise, or condemn anybody for anything; and it's high time I realised it. "If words of commendation, of courage, of kindly counsel, are needed by anybody in this world, I am not the man to utter them. What a hypocrite must I seem to you! I who sat there beside you preaching platitudes in strong self-complacency, instructing you how morally edifying it is to be good and unhappy. "Then, what happened? I don't know exactly; but I'm trying to be honest, and I'll tell you what I think happened: "You are--you; I am--I; and we are still those same two people who understood neither the impulse that once swept us together, nor the forces that tore us apart--ah, more than that! we never understood each other! And we do not now. "That is what happened. We were too near together again; the same spark leaped, the same blindness struck us, the same impulse swayed us--call it what we will!--and it quickened out of chaos, grew from nothing into unreasoning existence. It was the terrific menace of emotion, stunning us both--simply because you are you and I am I. And that is what happened. "We cannot deny it; we may not have believed it possible--or in fact considered it at all. I did not; I am sure you did not. Yet it occurred, and we cannot deny it, and we can no more explain or understand it than we can understand each other.