lame, Morabita, sing. Only, if her voice is still as
sympathetic as of old, if it moves you from your present insensibility,
you may read remembrance of some aspects of my visit into the witchery
of it if you like. It may occur to you what those aspects really
meant."

Helen smiled upon him, leaning a little forward. Her eyes shone, as
though looking out through unshed tears.

"It's not exactly flattering to one's vanity to be compelled to depute
to another woman the making of such things clear. But it is too evident
I waste my time in attempting to make them clear myself. No explanation
is lucid, _et caetera_----"

Helen shook back her head with an extraordinary charm of half-defiant,
half-tearful laughter. She was playing a game, her whole intelligence
bent on the playing of it skilfully. Yet she was genuinely touched. She
was swayed by her very real emotion. She spoke from her heart, though
every word, every passing action, subserved her ultimate purpose in
regard to Richard Calmady.

"And, after all, one must retain some remnant of self-respect with
which to cover the nakedness of one's---- Oh yes! decidedly, Morabita's
voice had best do the rest."

Richard had moved from his station in the window. He stood at the far
end of the sofa, resting his hands on the gilded and carven arm of it.
Now the ungainliness of his deformity was hidden, and his height was
greater than that of his companion, obliging her to look up at him.

"I gave you my word, Helen," he said, "I have no notion what you are
driving at."

"Driving at, driving at?" she cried. "Why, the self-evident truth that
you are forcing me rather brutally to pay the full price of my weakness
in coming here, in permitting myself the indulgence of seeing you
again. You told me directly I arrived, with rather cynical frankness,
that I had not changed. That is quite true. What I was at Brockhurst,
four years ago, what I then felt, that I am and that I feel still. Oh!
you have nothing to reproach yourself with in defect of plain speaking,
or excess of amiable subterfuge! You hit out very straight from the
shoulder! Directly I arrived you also told me how you had devoted this
place--with which, after all, I am not wholly unconnected--to the cult,
to the ideal worship, of a woman whom you loved."

"So I have devoted it," Richard said.

"And yet I was weak enough to remain!"

The young man's face relaxed, but its expression remained enigmatic.

"And why not