s. Van Dieman, made it necessary that she be
told the truth; since the dazed horror of that revelation when, beside
herself with grief and shame, she had turned blindly to herself for
help; and, childish impulse answering, had hurled her into folly
unutterable, she had, far in the unlighted crypt of her young soul,
feared this unknown sleeping self, its unfolded intelligence, its
passions unawakened.

Through many a night, wet-eyed in darkness, she had wondered whose blood
it was that flowed so warmly in her veins; what inherited capacity for
good and evil her soul and body held; whose eyes she had; whose hair,
and skin, and hands, and who in the vast blank world had given colour to
these eyes, this skin and hair, and shaped her fingers, her mouth, her
limbs, the delicate rose-tinted nails whitening in the clinched palm as
she lay there on her bed at night awake.

The darkness was her answer.

And thinking of these things she sighed unconsciously.

"What is it, Shiela?" he asked.

"Nothing; I don't know--the old pain, I suppose."

"Pain?" he repeated anxiously.

"No; only apprehension. You know, don't you? Well, then, it is nothing;
don't ask me." And, noting the quick change in his face--"No, no; it is
not what you think. How quickly you are hurt! My apprehension is not
about you; it concerns myself. And it is quite groundless. I know what I
must do; I _know_!" she repeated bitterly. "And there will always be a
straight path to the end; clear and straight, until I go out as nameless
as I came in to all this.... Don't touch my hand, please.... I'm trying
to think.... I can't, if we are in contact.... And you don't know who
you are touching; and I can't tell you. Only two in all the world, if
they are alive, could tell you. And they never will tell you--or tell
me--why they left me here alone."

With a little shiver she released her hand, looking straight ahead of
her for a few moments, then, unconsciously up into the blue overhead.

"I shall love you always," he said. "Right or wrong, always. Remember
that, too, when you think of these things."

She turned as though slowly aroused from abstraction, then shook her
head.

"It's very brave and boyish of you to be loyal--"

"You speak to me as though I were not years older than you!"

"I can't help it; I am old, old, sometimes, and tired of an isolation no
one can break for me."

"If you loved me--"

"How _can_ I? You _know_ I cannot!"

"Are you afraid