Her face had grown very serious, but her eyes remained unfathomable under his angry gaze.

“Is there any reason to raise that spectre between us?” he demanded.

“Dear, has it ever been laid?” she asked sorrowfully.

The muscles in his cheeks tightened and his eyes narrowed unpleasantly.  Only the one feature saved the man from sullen commonness in his suppressed anger—­and that was his boyish mouth, clean, sweet, nobly moulded, giving the lie to the baffled brutality gleaming in the eyes.  And the spark died out as it had come, subdued, extinguished when he could no longer sustain the quiet surprise of her regard.

“How very, very young you are after all,” she said gently.  “Come nearer.  Lift your sulky, wicked head.  Now ask my pardon for not understanding.”

“I ask it....  But when you speak of him—­”

“Hush.  He is only a shadow to you—­scarcely more to me.  He must remain so.  Do you not understand that I wish him to remain a shadow to you—­a thing without substance—­without a name?”

He bent his head, nodding almost imperceptibly.

“Garry?”

He looked up in response.

“There is something else—­if I could only say it....  I might if you would close your eyes.” ...  She hesitated, half-fearful, then drew his head down on her knees, daintily, using her finger-tips only in the operation.

“Are you listening to what I am trying to tell you?”

“Yes, very intently.”

“Then—­it’s about my being afraid—­of love....  Are you listening?...  It is very difficult for me to say this....  It is about my being afraid....  I used to be when I did not know enough to be.  And now, Garry, when I am less ignorant than I was—­when I have divined enough of my unknown self to be afraid—­dearest, I am not.”

She bent gently above the boyish head lying face downward on her knees—­waited timidly for some response, touched his hair.

“I am listening,” he nodded.

She said:  “My will to deny you, my courage to control myself seem to be waning.  I love you so; and it is becoming so much worse, such a blind, unreasoning love....  And—­do you think it will grow so much worse that I could be capable of anything ignoble?  Do you think I might be mad enough to beg my freedom?  I—­I don’t know where it is leading me, dear.  Do you?  It is that which bewilders me—­that I should love you so—­that I should not be afraid to love you so....  Hush, dear!  Don’t speak—­for I shall never be able to tell you this if you speak, or look at me.  And I want to ask you a question.  May I?  And will you keep your eyes covered?”

“Yes.”

“Then—­there are memories which burn my cheeks—­hush!—­I do not regret them....  Only, what am I changing into that I am capable of forgetting—­everything—­in the happiness of consenting to things I never dreamed of—­like this”—­bending and laying her lips softly against his cheek....  “That was wrong; it ought to frighten me.  But it does not.”