for neither by look nor gesture did she respond--"I've no right to be
saying this--"

"If you have not," she answered, and a delicate blush ran over her
skin, "no other man has!" She said it simply, but with a curious kind
of pride.

He would have taken her hand on this, but the grave, direct gaze of her
sapphirine eyes restrained him. It was not the look of a woman who
gives herself, but rather that of a woman who grieves for the
ungivable.

"Ah," she said, "if anyone's to blame, it is I. I've brought it on
myself! I've been weak--weak!"

"No," he said, "I brought it on--God brought it on--but what does that
matter?

"It's _here_. I can no more fight it than I can fight the sea."

Now her head dropped forward and her hands, with that gracefully
uncertain motion which was like flower-stalks swayed by a breeze, had
covered her face.

"I can't speak if I look at you," she said, "and I must before you go
further--I must tell you all about myself so that you will understand."

The confidence, long sought, was coming, he thought; and he thought
also how little he cared for it now that he was pursuing a greater
thing.