“Something’s troubling you,” he continued in the same voice. “Why won’t you let me help you? You needn’t tell me what it is, but you might let me help you. What am I here for but to take care of you, and fight for you, and protect you?” The words were indescribably sweet to the lonely girl. All the previous night she had tossed on her pillow haunted by terror of Essex and what he intended to do. She had felt herself completely helpless, and her uncertainty at what step he meant to take was torturing. For one moment of weakness she thought of pouring it all out to the man beside her, whose strong hand on her own had seemed symbolic of the grip, firm and fearless, he could take on the situation that was threatening her. Then she realized the impossibility of such a thing and drew back from the railing. “You can’t help me,” she said; “no one can.” He mounted a step and stretched his hand over the railing to try to detain her. “But I can do one thing: I can always be here, here close to you, ready to come when you call me, either in trouble or for advice. If ever you want help, help of any kind, I’ll be here. And if you had need of me I think I’d know it, and no matter where I was, I’d come. Remember that.” She had half turned away toward her door as he spoke, and now stood in profile, a tall figure, with her throat and wrists looking white as milk against the hard black line of her dress. She seemed a picture painted in few colors, her hair a coppery bronze, and her lips a clear, pale red, being the brightest tones in the composition. “Will you remember?” he said. “Yes,” she murmured. “And when you want help come to me, or call for me, and if I were at the ends of the world I’d hear you and come.” She turned completely away without answering and, opening her door, vanished into her room. For the next three or four days she looked much the same. Mrs. Garcia, junior, talked about the green wall-paper, and Mrs. Garcia, senior, cooked her Mexican dainties, which were so hot with chilli peppers that only a seasoned throat could swallow them. Mariposa tried to eat and to talk, but both efforts were failures. She was secretly distracted by apprehensions of Essex’s next move. She thought of his face as he had raised his hand to his smitten cheek, and shuddered at the memory. She lived in daily dread of his reappearance. The interview had shattered her nerves, never fully restored from the series of miserable events that had preceded and followed her mother’s death. When she heard the bell ring her heart sprang from her breast to her throat, and a desire to fly and hide from her persecutor seized her and held her quivering and alert.