ad
Louise come, like this, to the window; now that she did so, he was in
the room beside her, wishing himself away.

Then, with a swift movement, she came back to him, and stood at his
side.

"Then it was not true?--what you said that night."

"True?" echoed Maurice. He instinctively moved a step away from her,
and threw a quick glance at the pale face so near his own. "If I were
to tell you how much more than that is true, you wouldn't have anything
more to do with me."

For the second time, she seemed to see him and consider him. But he
kept his head turned stubbornly away.

"You feel like that," she began in slow surprise, to continue
hurriedly: "You care for me like that, and yet, when I ask the first
and only thing I shall ever ask of you, you won't do it? It is a lesson
to me, I suppose, not to come to you for help again.--Oh, I can't
understand you men! You are all--all alike."

"I would do anything in the world for you. Anything but this."

She repeated his last words after him. "But I want nothing else."

"This I can't tell you."

"Then you don't really care. You only think you do. If you can't do
this one small thing for me! Oh, there is no one else I can turn to, or
I would. Oh, please tell me!--you who make-believe to care for me. You
won't? When it comes to the point, a man will do nothing--nothing at
all."

"I would cut off my hands for you. But you are asking me to do
something I think wrong."

"Wrong! What is wrong?--and what is right? They are only words. Is it
right that I should be left like this?--thrown away like a broken
plate? Oh, I shall not rest till I know who it was that took him from
me. And you are the only person who can help me. Are you not a little
sorry for me? Is there nothing I can do to make you sorry?"

"You won't realise what you are asking me to do."

He spoke in a constrained voice, for he felt the impossibility of
standing out much longer against her. Louise caught the note of
yielding, and taking his hand in hers, laid it against her forehead.

"Feel that! Feel how it throbs and burns! And so it has gone on for
hours now, for days. I can't think or feel--with that fever in me. I
must know who it was, or I shall go mad. Don't torture me then--you,
too! You are good. Be kind to me now. Be my friend, Maurice Guest."

Maurice was vanquished; in a low voice he told her what she wished to
hear. She read the syllables from his lips, repeated the name slowly
after hi