ed would surely shrink from a man's
presence.

'You make for a simple end by strange means!'

'How is it,' she resumed, 'that since quite freely you pledged yourself
so sacredly to my service, you came most unwillingly when you thought I
had need of you?'

Before her penetrating gaze shame entered.

'For your need I would have come gladly; yes--I think so--in spite of
incurring worse; but for your pleasure----'

'Not, for instance, had I wished to see the colour of your eyes?'

It was but poor sport to put him out of countenance. Quite kindly she
asked, 'What now have you incurred that worse should be to dread?'

He began of the name 'Sinister,' and of all it implied. She laughed,
asking him why he should expound that. He went on to the definite ills
that had beset him, because the injury to his boat betrayed him to
inquisition.

'But how?' she asked; 'you admitted nothing, else you failed in your
promise to me.'

'No, but challenged, I could not deny I had dared here.'

'Why not?'

'It would not have been true,' he said, puzzled.

Diadyomene opened her eyes wide and laughed.

'And do you use your powers of speech only to say what is true?'

'Yes,' he said, indignant. 'How else?'

'Now I,' she said, 'use speech to disguise truth, with foul or with fair,
or sometimes to slay and bury it out of sight.'

'Then, when you declared you had not summoned me, was that untrue?'

'If I now answered "Yes" or "No," you could be no nearer satisfaction;
for you have not the wit to weigh my word with mood, disposition,
circumstance, to strike a balance for truth.'

Christian pondered, perplexed and amazed at that perverse argument.

'I would another were here to unreeve this tangle you are in. There is
one, wise, tender, a saint.'

Diadyomene levelled her brows.

'A woman! And you love her!' she said, and astonished the inexperienced
boy.

'Above all! She is mother to me.'

He said timidly: 'Of all evils incurred by my presumption here, the worst
is that between her and me your secret stands a bar to perfect
confidence. I did not guess it would gall her so. I may not tell you
how.'

'Yes, tell me.'

'I cannot.'

'A secret.'

'Not strictly; some day I might, but not now.'

She shot a keen glance, suspicious by that heedless reservation that,
after all, he was shrewdly playing his own game. He went on.

'With her your secret would be absolutely safe; and if her you would but
include----'

'But I