o with it. It really isn't at all
necessary, so the omission need not count. All along I've had the
feeling as if you were thrusting me back away from your life, and I
have always wanted to count for something in it, if ever so little.
Won't you let me now be of some help to you? It is wicked of you to
continue in this terrible solitude. I feel that you've promised to let
me come here and model you really against your will; don't deny it,
Morgan--your face spoke only too plainly. I should be standing here
and talking to you, but you would be as solitary as if I had never
come. I want to break down that stupid barrier between us; I want you
to believe in me, to trust me and to show me you trust me."

"It is myself I dare not trust. Such a friendship needs strength, and
I am not strong enough, Margaret."

"Then you must find the strength, Morgan. Weakness is an unmanly
excuse, and you are a man."

"You talk like that because you still do not realise what it means for
me to--to----"

He hesitated.

"Go on," she said. "I am strong enough to listen."

There was a silence, but she knew he was collecting his scattered
forces.

"To be friends with you," he went on determinedly. "You say that I
kept you at arm's length. That is true. But then you don't know what
my life has been--you never did really know even when we were close
together."

"Tell me then, Morgan. Make me understand why you kept me at arm's
length. I do not know how you came to marry so suddenly, what woman
you married, or why she left you. I want to know all about her. Tell
me, if it doesn't hurt you too much. Perhaps it will hurt you less
after you have told me."

"I have kept you at arm's length, Margaret, because I loved you. I am
struggling now to keep you at arm's length because I still love you.
Dare you stay here and listen to me after that?"

She looked him straight in the face.

"I dare, Morgan. I want you to know me as well as to love me. If you
had understood me, you would neither have thrust me back nor would you
be struggling to do so now. You no doubt always considered me just a
pretty girl, who thought and acted always as becomes what it called a
young lady; a colourless, conventional creature, without any judgment
or emotions of her own; just a white sheet of paper with a name
written across in beautiful lettering; a simpering thing in petticoats
who must smile and blush just at the right moments and be perfectly
proper at all tim