sensation of faintness which came over her must be visible in her
fluttering eyelids and in her trembling hands.

"I haven't faith in a salvation that must be worked out by somebody
else," she said, in a voice she made cold by an effort to render it
merely careless.

An instant before he had told himself with emphasis that he would go no
further, but the chill remoteness from which she looked at him stirred
him to an emotion that was not unlike a jealous anger. She seemed to him
then more brightly distant, more sweetly inaccessible than she had done
at their first meeting.

"Not even when it is a salvation through love?" he asked impulsively,
and at the thought that she was possibly less indifferent than she
appeared to be, he felt his desire of her mount swiftly to his head.

Her hand went to her bosom to keep down the wild beating of her heart,
but the face with which she regarded him was like the face of a statue.
"No--because I doubt the possibility of such a thing," she said.

"The possibility of my loving you or of your saving me?"

"The possibility of both."

"How little you know of me," he exclaimed, and his voice sounded hurt as
if he were wounded by her disbelief.

She raised her eyes and looked at him, and for several seconds they sat
in silence with only the little space between them.

"It is very well," she said presently, "that I believe nothing that you
say to me--or it might be hard to divide the truth from the untruth."

"I never told you an untruth in my life," he protested angrily.

"Doesn't a man always tell them to a woman?" she enquired.

For an instant he hesitated; then he spoke daringly, spurred on by her
indifferent aspect. "He doesn't when--he loves her."

"When he loves her more than ever," she returned quietly, as if his
remark held for her merely an historic interest, "Perry Bridewell loves
Gerty, I suppose, and yet he lies to her every day he lives."

"That's because she likes it," he commented, with a return of raillery.

"She doesn't like it--no woman does. As for me I want the truth even if
it kills me."

"It wouldn't kill you," he answered, and the tenderness in his voice
made her feel suddenly that she had never known what love could be, "it
would give you life." Then his tone changed quickly and the old pleasant
humour leaped to his eyes, "and whatever comes I promise never to lie to
you," he added.

She shook her head. "I didn't ask it," she rejoined, with a shar