“Good God.” As he stared in dismay at what he judged to be her unspeakable indiscretion, the thought rushed in on her straight from him, the naked, terrible thought, that there _should_ be anything they had to hide, they had to be alone for. She saw at the same time how defenceless he was before it; he couldn’t keep it back; he couldn’t put it away from him. It was always with him, a danger watching on his threshold. “Then” (he made her face it with him) “we’re done for.” “No, no,” she cried; “how could you think that? It was another thing. Something I’m trying to do.” “You told her,” he insisted. “What did you tell her?” “That I’m doing it. That I’m here for my health. She understands it that way.” He smiled as if he were satisfied, knowing her so well. And still his thought, his terrible, naked thought, was there. It was looking at her straight out of his eyes. “Are you sure she understands?” he said. “Yes. Absolutely.” He hesitated, and then put it differently. “Are you sure she doesn’t understand? That she hasn’t an inkling?” He wasn’t sure whether Agatha understood, whether she realized the danger. “About you and me,” he said. “Ah, my dear, I’ve kept _you_ secret. She doesn’t know we know each other. And if she did—” She finished it with a wonderful look, a look of unblinking yet vaguely, pitifully uncandid candour. She had always met him, and would always have to meet him, with the idea that there was nothing in it; for, if she once admitted that there was anything, then they _were_ done for. She couldn’t (how could she?) let him keep on coming with that thought in him, acknowledged by them both. That was where she came in, and where her secret, her gift, would work now more beneficently than ever. The beauty of it was that it would make them safe, absolutely safe. She had only got to apply it to that thought of his, and the thought would not exist. Since she could get at him, she could do for him what he, poor dear, couldn’t perhaps always do for himself; she could keep that dreadful possibility in him under; she could, in fact, make their communion all that she wanted it to be. “I don’t like it,” he said miserably. “I don’t like it.” A little line of worry was coming in his face again. The door opened and a maid began to go in and out, laying the table for their meal. He watched the door close on her and said, “Won’t that woman wonder what I come for?” “She can see what you come for.” She smiled. “Why are you spoiling it with thinking things?” “It’s for you I think them. _I_ don’t mind. It doesn’t matter so much for me. But I want you to be safe.” “Oh, _I’m_ safe, my dear,” she answered. “You were. And you would be still, if these Powells hadn’t found you out.” He meditated. “What do you suppose _they’ve_ come for?” he asked. “They’ve come, I imagine, for his health.” “What? To a god-forsaken place like this?”