“Now do you know what I am?” she said, breathing unevenly and watching him.  “Only one thing keeps me respectable.  I’d go with you; I’d live in rags to be with you.  I ask nothing in the world or of the world except you.  You could make me what you pleased, mould me—­mar me, I believe—­and I would be the happiest woman who ever loved. That is your saint!”

Flushed with her swift emotion, she stood a minute facing him, then laid her hand on the door knob behind her, still looking him in the eyes.  Behind her the door slowly swung open under the pressure.

His own self-control was fast going; he dared not trust himself to speak lest he break down and beg for the only chance that her loyalty to others forbade her to take.  But the new and deeper emotion which she had betrayed had awakened the ever-kindling impatience in him, and now, afire, he stood looking desperately on all he must for ever lose, till the suffering seemed unendurable in the checked violence of his revolt.

“Good night,” she whispered sorrowfully, as the shadow deepened on his altered face.

“Are you going!”

“Yes....  And, somehow I feel that perhaps it is better not to—­kiss me to-night.  When I see you—­this way—­Garry, I could find it in me to do anything—­almost....  Good night.”

Watching him, she waited in silence for a while, then turned slowly and lighted the tiny night-lamp on the table beside her bed.

When she returned to the open door there was no light in the hall.  She heard him moving somewhere in the distance.

“Where are you, Garry?”

He came back slowly through the dim corridor.

“Were you going without a word to me?” she asked.

He came nearer and leaned against the doorway.

“You are quite right,” he said sullenly.  “I’ve been a fool to let us drift in this way.  I don’t know where we’re headed for, and it’s time I did.”

“What do you mean?”—­in soft consternation.

“That there is no hope left for us—­and that we are both pretty young, both in love, both close to desperation.  At times I tell you I feel like a cornered beast—­feel like showing my teeth at the world—­like tearing you from it at any cost.  I’d do it, too, if it were not for your father and mother.  You and I could stand it.”

“I would let you do it—­if it were not for them,” she said.

They looked at one another, both pale.

“Would you give up the whole moral show for me?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“You’d get a first-rate scoundrel.”

“I wouldn’t care if it were you.”

“There’s one thing,” he said with a bluntness bordering on brutality, “all this is changing me into a man unfit to touch you.  I warn you.”

“What!”

“I tell you not to trust me!” he said almost savagely.  “With heart and soul and body on fire for you—­mad for you—­I’m not to be trusted!”