"It's more than an hour, but I know when. About me sticking my hand out?" "Just exactly then. I was thinking all the while that in another moment I should have your hand in mine, and keep it as long as I dared. Eyes were nothing--sight was nothing--life itself was nothing--nothing was anything but that one moment just ahead. It would not last, but it would fill the earth and the heavens with light and music, and keep death and the fiend that had been eating up my soul at bay--as long as it lasted. Dear love, I am not exaggerating...." "Do you expect me to believe that? Now be quiet, and perhaps I'll tell you what I was thinking when I found out you couldn't see--have been thinking ever since. I thought it well over in the night, and when I came into this room I meant it. I did, indeed." "Meant what?" "Meant to get at the truth about that ring of yours. I had got it on the brain, you see. I meant to find out whether she was anybody or nobody. And if she was nobody I was going to...." She comes to a standstill; for, even now--even after such a revelation, with one of his arms about her waist, and his free hand caressing her hair--Marcus Curtius sticks in her throat a little. "What were you going to?" said Adrian, really a little puzzled. Because even poets don't understand some women. "Well--if it wasn't you I wouldn't tell. I ... I had made up my mind to apply for the vacant place." This came with a rush, and might not have come at all had she felt his eyes could see her; knowing, as she did, the way the blood would quite unreasonably mount up to her face the moment she had uttered it. "It all seemed such plain sailing in the middle of the night, and it turned out not quite so easy as I thought it would be. You know.... Be quiet and let me talk now!... it was the guilt--my share in it--that was so hard to bear. I wanted to do _something_ to make it up to you. And what could I do? A woman is in such a fix. Oh, how glad I was when you opened fire on your own account! Only _frightened_, you know." He was beginning to say something, but she stopped him with:--"I know what you are going to say, but that's just where the difficulty came in. If only I hadn't cared twopence about you it would have been so easy!... Did you say how? Foolish man!--can't you see that if I hadn't loved you one scrap, or only half across your lips as we used to say when we were children, it would have been quite a let-off to be met with offers of a brother's love ... and that sort of thing.... Isn't that them?" This was colloquial. No doubt Gwen was exceptional, and all the other young ladies in the Red Book would have said:--"Are not these they?"