re afraid to tell me of?"

She was silent. Silence was her only refuge now.

He put his arm round her. "Because," he said very tenderly, "you needn't
be afraid, dear, Heaven knows."

That pierced her unbearably. Woman though she was, she almost cried out
under the pain of it.

She drew herself away from him. "Don't! please don't!" she said rather
breathlessly. "You--you must take things for granted sometimes. I can't
always be explaining my feelings. They won't stand it."

She tried to laugh, but could not. Again desperately she pressed her hand
to her throat. How would he take it? She wondered. Would he regard it as
a mere childish whim? Or would he see that he was dealing with a woman,
and a desperate woman at that?

She scarcely knew what she expected of him, but most assuredly she did
not anticipate his next move.

Quite quietly he picked up the jewel-case, and re-entered her room.

"It may as well go among your other treasures," he said. "You needn't
wear it--unless you wish--until you have paid me back."

His tone was perfectly ordinary. She wondered what was in his mind, how
he regarded her behaviour, why he treated her thus; not guessing that he
had set himself resolutely, with infinite patience, to show her how small
was her cause for fear.

He laid his hand upon the drawer that contained her trinkets, tried it,
turned round to her, faintly smiling.

"May I have the key?"

She had followed him in silence, and now she stood still, The key! The
key! It seemed to be searing her flesh, burning through to her very
heart. She suddenly felt as if all the Fates were arrayed against her.
Why--why--why had she chosen that drawer to guard her secret? Yet how
could she have foreseen this? A mist swam before her eyes. Her new-found
composure tottered.

"I--have lost it," she murmured.

"Lost it!" he echoed.

"I mean--I mean--" She was stammering now in open confusion--"I must have
laid it down somewhere. I--I shall find it again, no doubt."

He turned fully round and looked at her. She clasped her hands to still
her quivering nerves. This fresh ordeal was proving too much for her.

"I can't help it," she said, with white lips. "I often mislay things. I
am careless, I know. But I always find them again sooner or later. I will
have a look for it while you are dressing."

Her words ran on almost meaninglessly. She was speaking for the sake of
speaking, because silence would have been too terrible to be bo