Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/157

Rh me. You've overwhelmed me, I say, because I speak from the depths of my surrender. But you didn't do it, I imagine, to be cruel, and if you didn't do it to be cruel you did it to take what it would give you." Gradually, as she talked, he faced round again; she stood there supported by the high back of a chair, either side of which she held tight. "You know what I am, if any man has known, and it's to the thing I am—whatever that is—you've come back at last from so far. It's the thing I am—whatever that is—I now count on you to stand by."

"Whatever that is?"—Dennis mournfully marvelled. "I feel, on the contrary, that I've never, never known!"

"Well, it's before anything a woman who has such a need as no woman has ever had." Then she eagerly added: "Why on earth did you descend on me if you hadn't need of me?"

Dennis took for an instant, quite as if she were not there, several turns in the wide place; moving in the dumb distress of a man confronted with the greatest danger of his life and obliged, while precious minutes lapse, to snatch at a way of safety. His whole air was an instinctive retreat from being