"Because I knew how much he wanted it. Can you not see? Oh, why must I always speak the truth to you? But I do not care. It is the truth, and you must make what you can of it." She was flushed with the colour of pride, and pride had stilled her hands. "And even now I have not told you all the truth. There is no need to tell you this, but I choose to do so. It was not only because I saw what it was he wanted; it was because I could not speak of that one day we had together, when I knew what it was to have a friend and to forget myself. I wanted to keep that secret, like a treasure, and it is a secret that has killed him. And these are things I think I might have been forgiven for not telling you, but I tell you because that day made you my friend. And there should be no--no falseness between us." He laughed, and caught suddenly at her hand, and let it go. "I love the truth of you," he said. "Theresa, let me tell you now. There shall be no shadows between you and me, unless you put them there. The day on which you called me friend made me your lover. Theresa, can you love me back? I am not satisfied with serving. I will not say I am. I want all I have ever seen, or heard, or dreamt of you, and all I do not know, all you may grow to be. Last night, when I was lying outside your door, listening for the sound of you, I did not think about my mother; I did not think about my father or yours. I remembered how you had put your head against my arm, under the yews, and how you had smiled at me in the firelight, and I could not sleep for hoping, and I thought you must have heard me crying out to you; that perhaps the door would open, and I should see you, like a moonbeam, and you'd put your hand in mine. But the door kept shut----" "Oh," she said on a long, low note, "do you think I did not want to open it? Were you awake, too? Oh, Alexander, we've wasted half a night! We shall never make it up. Here are my hands now." She put them shaking into his, then snatched them from him. "No," she said, and knelt beside the water. "Look, I'm washing them in water from the hills because I once lent them to someone else. I only lent them, Alexander, but I wasn't true. Oh, do you think they're clean?" She held them up, glistening with drops. "I cannot see unless you give them to me." With one swift movement she was on her feet and he had her hands. "These are all the diamonds you'll ever get from me," he said. She laughed, throwing back her head. "You know you wouldn't give them to me if you could." "I should, I should. I'd give you all that man could give you." "Ah! don't," she said soberly. "That's a silly kind of jealousy, but I like it." "And I am jealous. Do you think I'll ever forgive him for having touched you, and put a ring on your finger, and set you on a horse, and promised himself to give you all the beauty he could buy? Do you think I don't want to outdo him a hundred times in those as in all other ways?"