“Do you think I care for that?” he asked.

“You ought to care,” she said, without looking up.  “And it is my duty to try to make you care.”

“Honora, why do you think I came over here?” he said.

“To see Paris,” she answered.  “I have your own word for it.  To—­to continue your education.  It never seems to stop.”

“Did you really believe that?”

“Of course I believed it.  What could be more natural?  And you have never had a holiday like this.”

“No,” he agreed.  “I admit that.”

“I don’t know how much longer you are going to stay,” she said.  “You have not been abroad before, and there are other places you ought to go.”

“I’ll get you to make out an itinerary.”

“Peter, can’t you see that I’m serious?  I have decided to take matters in my own hands.  The rest of the time you are here, you may come to see me twice a week.  I shall instruct the concierge.”

He turned and grasped the mantel shelf with both hands, and touched the log with the toe of his boot.

“What I told you about seeing Paris may be called polite fiction,” he said.  “I came over here to see you.  I have been afraid to say it until to-day, and I am afraid to say it now.”

She sat very still.  The log flared up again, and he turned slowly and looked at the shadows in her face.

“You-you have always been good to me,” she answered.  “I have never deserved it—­I have never understood it.  If it is any satisfaction for you to know that what I have saved of myself I owe to you, I tell you so freely.”

“That,” he said, “is something for which God forbid that I should take credit.  What you are is due to the development of a germ within you, a development in which I have always had faith.  I came here to see you, I came here because I love you, because I have always loved you, Honora.”

“Oh, no, not that!” she cried; “not that!”

“Why not?” he asked.  “It is something I cannot help, something beyond my power to prevent if I would.  But I would not.  I am proud of it, and I should be lost without it.  I have had it always.  I have come over to beg you to marry me.”

“It’s impossible!  Can’t you see it’s impossible?”

“You don’t love me?” he said.  Into those few words was thrown all the suffering of his silent years.

“I don’t know what I feel for you,” she answered in an agonized voice, her fingers tightening over the backs of her white hands.  “If reverence be love—­if trust be love, infinite and absolute trust—­if gratitude be love—­if emptiness after you are gone be a sign of it—­yes, I love you.  If the power to see clearly only through you, to interpret myself only by your aid be love, I acknowledge it.  I tell you so freely, as of your right to know.  And the germ of which you spoke is you.  You have grown until you have taken possession of—­of what is left of me.  If I had only been able to see clearly from the first,