did it remind her as he murmured words of victory, clasped
her and kissed her? It reminded her of Paul Quentin. In the midst of the
amazing joy she knew that the horror was as great.

"Ah don't!--how can you!--how can you!" she said.

She drew away from him but he would not let her go.

"How can I? How can I do anything else?" he laughed, in easy yet excited
triumph. "You do love me--you darling nun!"

She had freed her hands and covered her face: "I beg of you," she
prayed.

The agony of her sincerity was too apparent. Sir Hugh unclasped his
arms. She went to her chair, sat down, leaned on the table, still
covering her eyes. So she had leaned, years ago, with hidden face, in
telling Bertram of the coming of the child. It seemed to her now that
her shame was more complete, more overwhelming. And, though it
overwhelmed her, her bliss was there; the golden and the black streams
ran together.

"Dearest,--should I have been less sudden?" Sir Hugh was beside her,
leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her.
"It's not as if we didn't know each other, Amabel: we have been
strangers, in a sense;--yet, through it all--all these years--haven't we
felt near?--Ah darling, you can't deny it;--you can't deny you love me."
His arm was pressing her.

"Please--" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond
her crouching shoulder.

"You are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?--Is that it?
But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a
beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a
girl you are."--Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And
however like a nun you've lived--you can't deny that you love me."

"You haven't loved me," Amabel at last could say.

He paused, but only for a moment. "Perhaps not: but," his voice had now
the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could I believe that
there was a chance for me? How could I think you could ever come to
care, like this, when you had left me--you know--Amabel."

She was silent, her mind whirling. And his nearness, as he leaned over
her, was less ecstasy than terror. It was as if she only knew her love,
her sacred love again, when he was not near.

"It's quite of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid
ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've
only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew