“Yes,” she said mechanically, “we have indeed been good friends. I knew in an instant yesterday that it was to you I should go when I was in great need. I knew that you would help me.” He looked at her gravely and in silence for some moments. Then he suddenly put out his hand to her. “Good-bye,” he said quickly--unnaturally; and before their hands had more than met for the second time he turned and walked rapidly away to the gate, leaving her standing under the shady elm in the centre of the lawn. For a moment or two she was too much surprised to be able to make any move. He had never behaved so curiously before. She was trying to think what she had said or what she had suggested that had hurt his feelings, for it seemed to her that his sudden departure might be taken to indicate that she had said something that jarred upon him. She hastened across the lawn and through the tennis-ground, to intercept him on the road. Only a low privet hedge stood between the road and the gardens of The Kroll, and she reached this hedge and looked over it before he had passed. She saw him approaching; his eyes were upon the ground. It was his turn to be startled as she spoke his name, looking over the hedge. He looked up quickly. “Did I say anything that I should not have said just now?” she asked. “Why did you hurry away before our hands had more than met?” “Shall I come back?” he said, after looking into her eyes with a curious expression in his. “Will you ask me to return?” “I will--I will--I will,” she cried. “Please return and tell me if I said anything that hurt you. I would not do so for the world. Nothing but gratitude and good feeling for you was in my heart. Oh yes, pray return.” “If I were wise I should not have returned when you made use of that word 'gratitude,'” said he when he had come beside her, through the small rustic gate which she opened for him from the inside. “Gratitude is the opposite to love, and I love you.” With a startled cry she took a step or two back from him, and held up her hands as if instinctively to avert a blow. “I have startled you,” he said. “I was rude; but indeed I do not know of any way of saying that I love you except in those words. I have had no experience either in loving or in confessing my love. I came here this morning to say those words to you, but when I looked at you standing beside me under the elm--when I saw how beautiful you were--how full of God's grace, and goodness, and tenderness, and charity, I was so overcome with the thought of my own unworthiness to love such a one as you, that”-- “Oh no, no; for God's sake, do not say that--do not say that,” she cried, holding out her hands to him in an appealing attitude. “Alas! alas! that word love must never pass between us.” “Why should not the word pass, when my heart and soul”--