to love me?"

She blushed crimson, saying: "If I--if such a misfortune--"

"Such a misfortune as your loving me?"

"Yes; if it came, I would never, never admit it! Why do you say these
things to me? Won't you understand? I've tried so hard--so hard to warn
you!" The colour flamed in her cheeks; a sort of sweet anger possessed
her.

"Must I tell you more than I have told before you can comprehend the
utter impossibility of any--love--between us?"

His hand fell over hers and held it crushed.

"Tell me no more," he said, "until you can tell me that you dare to
love!"

"What do you mean? Do you mean that a girl does not do a dishonourable
thing because she dares not?--a sinful thing because she's afraid? If it
were only that--" She smiled, breathless. "It is not fear. It is that a
girl _can_ not love where love is forbidden."

"And you believe that?"

"Believe it!"--in astonishment.

"Yes; do you believe it?"

She had never before questioned it. Dazed by his impatience, dismayed,
she affirmed it again, mechanically. And the first doubt entered as she
spoke, confusing her, awakening a swarm of little latent ideas and
misgivings, stirring memories of half-uttered sentences checked at her
entrance into a room, veiled allusions, words, nods, that she remembered
but had never understood. And, somehow, his question seemed a key to
this cipher, innocently retained in the unseen brain-cells, stored up
without suspicion--almost without curiosity.

For all her recent eloquence upon unhappiness and divorce, it came to
her now in some still subtle manner, that she had been speaking
concerning things in the world of which she knew nothing. And one of
them, perhaps, was love.

Then every instinct within her revolted, all her innate delicacy, all
the fastidious purity recoiled before the menace of his question. Love!
Was it possible? Was this that she already felt, _love_? Could such
treachery to herself, such treason to training and instinct arise within
her and she not know it?

Panic-stricken she raised her head; and at sight of him a blind impulse
to finish with him possessed her--to crush out that menace--end it for
ever--open his eyes to the inexorable truth.

"Lean nearer," she said quietly. Every vestige of blood had left her
face.

"Listen to me. Two years ago I was told that I am a common foundling.
Under the shock of that--disclosure--I ruined my life for ever.... Don't
speak! I mean to check that ruin wh