“You have fixed it yourself,” he said.

“How?”

“By the challenge of your womanhood.”

“I did not challenge—­”

“No; you defended.  You are right.  The girl I cared for—­the girl who was there with me on Brier Water—­so many, many centuries ago—­the girl who, years ago, leaned there beside me on the sun-dial—­has become a memory.”

“What do you mean?” she asked faintly.

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“You will not be unhappy if I tell you?”

“N-no.”

“Have you any idea what I am going to say, Eileen?”

She looked up quickly, frightened at the tremor in his voice: 

“Don’t—­don’t say it, Captain Selwyn!”

“Will you listen—­as a penance?”

“I—­no, I cannot—­”

He said quietly:  “I was afraid you could not listen.  You see, Eileen, that, after all, a man does know when he is done for—­”

“Captain Selwyn!” She turned and caught his hands in both of hers, her eyes bright with tears:  “Is that the penalty for what I said?  Did you think I invited this—­”

“Invited!  No, child,” he said gently.  “I was fool enough to believe in myself; that is all.  I have always been on the edge of loving you.  Only in dreams did I ever dare set foot across that frontier.  Now I have dared.  I love you.  That is all; and it must not distress you.”

“But it does not,” she said; “I have always loved you—­dearly, dearly. . . .  Not in that way. . . .  I don’t know how. . . .  Must it be in that way, Captain Selwyn?  Can we not go on in the other way—­that dear way which I—­I have—­almost spoiled?  Must we be like other people—­must sentiment turn it all to commonplace? . . .  Listen to me; I do love you; it is perfectly easy and simple to say it.  But it is not emotional, it is not sentimental.  Can’t you see that in little things—­in my ways with you?  I—­if I were sentimental about you I would call you Ph—­by your first name, I suppose.  But I can’t; I’ve tried to—­and it’s very, very hard—­and makes me self-conscious.  It is an effort, you see—­and so would it be for me to think of you sentimentally.  Oh, I couldn’t!  I couldn’t!—­you, so much of a man, so strong and generous and experienced and clever—­so perfectly the embodiment of everything I care for in a man!  I love you dearly; but—­you saw!  I could—­could not bring myself to touch even your hair—­even in pure mischief. . . .  And—­sentiment chills me; I—­there are times when it would be unendurable—­I could not use an endearing term—­nor suffer a—­a caress. . . .  So you see—­don’t you?  And won’t you take me for what I am?—­and as I am?—­a girl—­still young, devoted to you with all her soul—­happy with you, believing implicitly in you, deeply, deeply sensible of your goodness and sweetness and loyalty to her.  I am not a woman; I was a fool to say so.  But you—­you are so overwhelmingly a man that if it were in me to love—­in that way—­it would be you! . . .  Do you understand me?  Or have I lost a friend?  Will you forgive my foolish boast?  Can you still keep me first in your heart—­as you are in mine?  And pardon in me all that I am not?  Can you do these things because I ask you?”