?" he asked.

"Because, in remaining, I have laid myself open to misconstruction, to
all manner of pains and penalties, not easy to be endured, to the
odious certainty of appearing contemptible in your estimation as well
as in my own."

Helen patted her pretty foot upon the floor in a small frenzy of
irritation.

"How can I hope to escape, since even the precious being whom you
affect to worship you keep sternly at arm's length, that is among the
other pleasing things you confided to me immediately on my
arrival--lest, seen at close quarters, she should fall below your
requirements and so you should suffer disillusion. Ah! you are
frightfully cold-blooded, repulsively inhuman. Whether you judge others
by yourself, reckoning them equally devoid of natural feeling, or
whether you find a vindictive relish in rejecting the friendship and
affection so lavishly offered you----"

"Is it offered lavishly? That comes as news to me," he put in.

"Ah! but it is. And I leave you to picture the pleasing entertainment
afforded the offerer in seeing you ignore the offering, or, worse
still, take it, examine it, and throw it aside like a dirty rag! In one
case you underline your rejection almost to the point of insult."

"This is very instructive. I am learning a whole lot about myself,"
Richard said coolly.

"But look," Madame de Vallorbes cried, "do you not prefer exposing
yourself to the probability of serious illness rather than remain under
the same roof with me? The inference hits one in the face. To you the
pestilential exhalations, the unspeakable abominations, of Naples
harbour appear less dangerous than my near neighbourhood."

"You put it more strongly than I should," he answered, smiling. "Yet,
from a certain standpoint, that may very well be true."

For an instant Helen hesitated. Her intelligence, for all its
alertness, was strained exactly to appraise the value of his words,
neither over, nor under, rating it. And her eyes searched his with a
certain boldness and imperiousness of gaze. Richard, meanwhile, folding
his arms upon the carven and gilt frame of the sofa, looked back at
her, smiling still, at once ironically and very sadly. Then swift
assurance came to her of the brazen card she had best play. But,
playing it, she was constrained to avert her eyes and set her glance
pensively upon the light-visited surface of her crocus-yellow, silken
lap.

"I will do my best possible to accept your nightly journey