“No.”

“Not one?”

“No!”

“To help us endure?”

Suddenly she turned in his arms, covering her eyes with both hands.

“Take—­what—­you wish—­” she panted.

He touched one slim rigid finger after another, but they clung fast to the pallid face.  Time and space reeled through silence.  Then slowly, lids still sealed with desperate white hands, her head sank backward.

Untaught, her lips yielded coldly; but the body, stunned, swayed toward him as he released her; and, his arm supporting her, they turned blindly toward the path.  Without power, without will, passive, dependent on his strength, her trembling knees almost failed her.  She seemed unconscious of his lips on her cheek, on her hair—­of her cold hands crushed in his, of the words he uttered—­senseless, broken phrases, questions to which her silence answered and her closed lids acquiesced.  If love was what he was asking for, why did he ask?  He had his will of her lips, her hair, her slim fragrant hands; and now of her tears—­for the lashes were wet and the mouth trembled.  Her mind was slowly awaking to pain.

With it, far within her in unknown depths, something else stirred, stilling her swelling heart.  Then every vein in her grew warm; and the quick tears sprang to her eyes.

“Dearest—­dearest—­” he whispered.  Through the dim star-pallor she turned toward him, halted, passing her finger-tips across her lashes.

“After all,” she said, “it was too late.  If there is any sin in loving you it happened long ago—­not to-night....  It began from the—­the beginning.  Does the touch of your lips make me any worse?...  But I am not afraid—­if you wish it—­now that I know I always loved you.”

“Shiela!  Shiela, little sweetheart—­”

“I love you so—­I love you so,” she said.  “I cannot help it any more than I could in dreams—­any more than I could when we met in the sea and the fog....  Should I lie to myself and you?  I know I can never have you for mine; I know—­I know.  But if you will be near me when you can—­if you will only be near—­sometimes—­”

She pressed both his hands close between hers.

“Dear—­can you give up your freedom for a girl you cannot have?”

“I did so long since.”

She bent and laid her lips on his hands, gravely.

“I must say something—­that disturbs me a little.  May I?  Then, there are perils—­warnings—­veiled hints....  They mean nothing definite to me....  Should I be wiser?...  It is difficult to say—­senseless—­showing my ignorance, but I thought if there were perils that I should know about—­that could possibly concern me, now, you would tell me, somehow—­in time—­”

For a moment the revelation of her faith and innocence—­the disclosure of how strange and lost she felt in the overwhelming catastrophe of forbidden love—­how ignorant, how alone, left him without a word to utter.