ul thing, and to me!--I cannot tell you what he was to me. I
suppose, for the very reason that we were so much to one another, we
did not make any other very close friends. I had girls in Dresden, of
course, and there were men at school and college for whom he cared,
but I think there can have been few brothers and sisters who were so
entirely together in every way. A month ago that all ceased."

She flung her head back with a sharp defiant movement as though the
memory of it hurt her.

"I've told you this before. I talked to you about it when you were
here last. But since then he has become much worse and I am afraid that
anything may happen. I have no one to go to. It is killing my mother,
and then--you were a friend of his."

"I hope that I am now."

"That is the horrible part of it. But it seems now that all this
agitation, this trouble, is directed against you."

"Against me"

"Yes, the other evening he spoke about you--here--furiously. He said
you must never come here again, that I must never speak to you again.
He said that you had done dreadful things. And then when I asked him he
could not tell me anything. He seemed--and you must look on it in that
light, Mr. Dune--as though he were not in the least responsible for what
he said. I'm afraid he is very, very ill. He is dreadfully unhappy, and
yet he can explain nothing. I too have been very unhappy, and mother,
because we love him."

"If he wishes that I should not come here again---" Olva began.

"But he is not responsible. He really does not know what he is doing.
He never had the smallest trouble that he did not confide it to me, and
now---"

"I have noticed, of course," Olva said "that lately his manner to me has
been strange. I would have helped him if he would let me, but he will
not. He will have nothing to say to me . . . I too have been very sorry
about it. I have been sorry because I am fond of Rupert, but also--there
is another, stronger reason--because I love you, Margaret."

As he spoke he got up and stood by her chair. He saw her take in his
last words, at first with a wondering gravity, then with a sudden
splendour so that light flooded her face; her arms made a little
helpless gesture, and she caught his hand.

He drew her up to him out of her chair; then, with a fierce passionate
movement, they held one another and clung together as though in a
desperate wild protest against the world.

"You can't touch me now--I've got her," he s