I said, in a low voice. "I suppose you have
no need of me?"

She made me no answer.

"Why did you fling my guinea in the sea?" I said, and paused.

"Why did you use me so on the way?" I asked.

"Why haven't you sent for me?" I whispered.

She seemed to have no answer for any of these questions. There was
nothing in her eyes now save the desire of escape. Yet she did not
dismiss me, and without dismissal I would not go. I had forgotten
Carford and the angry Frenchman, my quarrel and her peril; the questions
I had put to her summed up all life now held.

Suddenly she put her hand to her bosom, and drew out that same piece of
paper which I had seen her hide there. Before my eyes she read, or
seemed to read, something that was in it; then she shut her hand on it.
In a moment I was by her, very close. I looked full in her eyes, and
they fled behind covering lids; the little hand, tightly clenched, hung
by her side. What had I to lose? Was I not already banned for
forwardness? I would be forward still, and justify the sentence by an
after-crime. I took the hanging hand in both of mine. She started, and I
loosed it; but no rebuke came, and she did not fly. The far-off stir of
coming victory moved in my blood; not yet to win, but now to know that
win you will sends through a man an exultation, more sweet because it is
still timid. I watched her face--it was very pale--and again took her
hand. The lids of her eyes rose now an instant, and disclosed entreaty.
I was ruthless; our hearts are strange, and cruelty or the desire of
mastery mingled with love in my tightened grasp. One by one I bent her
fingers back; the crushed paper lay in a palm that was streaked to red
and white. With one hand still I held hers, with the other I spread out
the paper. "You mustn't read it," she murmured. "Oh, you mustn't read
it." I paid no heed, but held it up. A low exclamation of wonder broke
from me. The scrawl that I had seen at Canterbury now met me again,
plain and unmistakable in its laborious awkwardness. "In pay for your
dagger," it had said before. Were five words the bounds of Nell's
accomplishment? She had written no more now. Yet before she had seemed
to say much in that narrow limit; and much she said now.

There was long silence between us; my eyes were intent on her veiled
eyes.

"You needed this to tell you?" I said at last.

"You loved her, Simon."

I would not allow the plea. Shall not a thing that has become out of al