she said, "why you've come back." He inclined himself to her, almost
pulling up again, with an air that startled her into a certainty of what
she had feared. "Because I've learned the real answer to the question I
asked you the other day. You're not happy--you're too good to be happy
on the terms offered you. Madame de Mauves," he went on with a gesture
which protested against a gesture of her own, "I can't be happy, you
know, when you're as little so as I make you out. I don't care for
anything so long as I only feel helpless and sore about you. I found
during those dreary days in Paris that the thing in life I most care for
is this daily privilege of seeing you. I know it's very brutal to tell
you I admire you; it's an insult to you to treat you as if you had
complained to me or appealed to me. But such a friendship as I waked up
to there"--and he tossed his head toward the distant city--"is a potent
force, I assure you. When forces are stupidly stifled they explode.
However," he went on, "if you had told me every trouble in your heart it
would have mattered little; I couldn't say more than I--that if that in
life from which you've hoped most has given you least, this devoted
respect of mine will refuse no service and betray no trust."

She had begun to make marks in the earth with the point of her parasol,
but she stopped and listened to him in perfect immobility--immobility
save for the appearance by the time he had stopped speaking of a flush
in her guarded clearness. Such as it was it told Longmore she was moved,
and his first perceiving it was the happiest moment of his life. She
raised her eyes at last, and they uttered a plea for non-insistence that
unspeakably touched him.

"Thank you--thank you!" she said calmly enough; but the next moment her
own emotion baffled this pretence, a convulsion shook her for ten
seconds and she burst into tears. Her tears vanished as quickly as they