ll me! Tell
me!"

That was the truth. In order to penetrate his life history, which she
pictured to herself as full of passionate, checkered events, she had
done everything that he had demanded of her.

Daniel refused; he was silent; he was afraid he would darken the girl's
pure mind, jeopardise her unsuspecting innocence. He was afraid to
conjure up the shadows.

One day she was talking along in her easy way, and while so doing she
tripped herself up. She had begun to tell him about the men she had been
going with; and before she knew what she was doing, she had fallen into
the tone she used when she talked with her Uncle Carovius. Becoming
suddenly aware of her indiscretion, she stopped, embarrassed. Daniel's
serious questions caused her to make some confessions she would
otherwise never have thought of making. She told a goodly number of
rather murky and ugly stories, and it was very hard for her to act as
though she were innocent or the victim of circumstances. At last, unable
longer to escape from the net she had woven, she made a clean breast of
her whole life, painted it all in the gaudiest colours, and then waited
in breathless--but agreeable--suspense to see what effect it would have
on Daniel.

Daniel was silent for a while; then he made a motion with his
outstretched hand as if he were cutting something in two: "Away from
them, Dorothea, or away from me!"

Dorothea bowed her head, and then looked at him timidly from head to
foot. The decisiveness with which he spoke was something new to her,
though it was by no means offensive. A voluptuous shudder ran through
her limbs. "Yes," she whispered girlishly, "I am going to put an end to
it. I never realised what it all meant. But don't be angry, will you?
No, you won't, will you?"

She came closer to him; her eyes were filled with tears. "Don't be angry
at me," she said again, "poor Dorothea can't help it. She is not
responsible for it."

"But how did you come to do it?" asked Daniel. "I can't see how it was
possible. Weren't you disgusted to the very bottom of your soul? How
could you go about under God's free heavens with such hyenas? Why,
girl, the very thought of it fills me with scepticism about everything."

"What should I have done, Daniel?" she said, calling him by his
baptismal name for the first time. She spoke with a felicitous mixture
of submissiveness and boldness that touched and at the same time
enchanted him. "What should I have done? The