"Is this your answer to my question?" he said finally. "It would have been simpler to have put it some other way. But you may at least congratulate yourself on having succeeded. You have killed something that I had thought to be almost eternal." He drew in his breath sharply, but passion was shaking him now, it had to have its say. "I have loved you," he went on hoarsely, "ever since I first saw you. Common sense has argued against you; pride has fought to throw you out of my life; but against everything your face has lived triumphant. I don't know why God makes us feel like that for women of your stamp, why we should bring such great ideals to so poor a shrine. I am talking arrant nonsense, just raving at you, you think, and I sound rather absurd even to myself. Only--my God! you don't know what you have done--you have broken my faith in you; it was the strongest, the best thing in my life." Joan crouched down in the chair; she seemed to be trying to get as far away from his voice as possible; she sat with her head buried in her arms. "I built up a dream about you two years ago," Dick went on. "You don't remember anything about me; but our meeting, your face as you stood that day with your back to the wall, were stamped on my heart as with a branding-iron. Of all the foolish things that a man could do perhaps I chose the worst; for ever as I stood and watched you the shadow of shame grew up beside you, and other people turned away from you. But I thought I saw further than the rest; I imagined that I had seen through your eyes, because already I loved them, into your soul. There is some mistake here, I argued, some mystery which she herself shall one day make clear to me." Joan had lifted her head and was staring at him. "From that day I started building my dream. I went abroad, but the memory of your face went with me; I used to make love to other women, but it was because I looked for you in their eyes. Then I came home and I saw you again. Suddenly my dream crystallized into clear, unshakable fact; I loved, I had always loved you; nothing that other people could say against you would have any effect. It lay just with you, and to-day you have given me your answer and broken with your own hand the dream." He turned towards the door; Joan staggered to her feet and ran to him. The vague memory in her mind had leapt to life; his eyes had often reminded her of someone. She remembered now that he was the young doctor that Aunt Janet had sent for. She remembered her own defiance as she had faced him and the pity in his eyes. "Dick," she whispered, "Dick, I didn't know, I didn't understand. I thought--oh, don't go away and leave me just like this, I might explain." Her torrent of words broke down before the look on his face; she fell to her knees, clutching at his hands. "Won't you listen? It was because I was afraid to tell you; I was afraid, afraid."