"Then, my first question seems, in the face of that, almost a mockery. I was going to ask you," and he half gasped--"it is nothing--nothing about her that is at the root of all this misery? No fancy," again the gasp, "that--that she doesn't care for you, or love you enough? No nonsense about your not being suited to each other, or that you couldn't make a girl of her sensitive, high-strung nature happy?" "No," said Arthur, and the word seemed to ring through the room. "No, I know she loves me as I love her. Oh, no, not quite like that, I trust," and his voice was firm through all the tragedy of the last sentence. "And I believe I could have made her very happy. Leave her name out of it now, Phil, once for all. It has nothing to do personally with the woman who is, and always will be, to me my perfect ideal of sweetness and excellence and truth and beauty." "Then it has to do with yourself," murmured Keir. "Come, the radius is narrowing. I flew out at poor Trevannion when he suggested it, but all the same, it's nothing in your past you're ashamed of that's come to light, is it? The best fellows in the world make fools of themselves sometimes, you know. Don't mind my asking." "I don't mind," said Arthur wearily, "but it's no use. No, it's nothing like that. I have done nothing I am ashamed of. I am not secretly married, nor have I committed forgery," with a very ghastly attempt at a smile. "Then," said Philip, "is it something about your family. Have you found out that there's a strain of insanity in the Lingards perhaps? People exaggerate that kind of thing now-a-days. There's a touch of it in us all, I take it." "No," said Arthur, again "my family's all right. I've no very near relations except my sister, but you know her, and you know all about us. We're not adventurers in any sense of the word." "Far from it," agreed Philip warmly. Then for a moment or two he relapsed into silence. "Does your sister--does Lady West know about--about this mysterious affair?" he asked abruptly, after some pondering. "Nothing whatever. I, of course, was bound by every consideration not to tell her--to tell no one anything till it was understood by--the Trevannions. And I had no reason for consulting her or--any friend," Arthur replied. He spoke jerkily and with effort, as if he were putting force on himself to endure what yet he was convinced was absolutely useless torture. But his words gave Keir a new opening, which he was quick to seize. "That's just it," he exclaimed eagerly. "That's just where it strikes me you've gone wrong. You should have consulted some one--not myself, not your sister even; I don't say whom, but some one sensible and trustworthy. I believe your mind has got warped. You've been thinking over this trouble, whatever it is, till you can't see it rightly. You've exaggerated it out of all proportion, and you shouldn't trust your own morbid judgment."