"I love you,
darling! I love you,--only--only--you!" she whispered brokenly.
"You believe that?"

"Yes," he said again between his kisses.

"And if I tried to do without you it was only because--only because--I
loved you so," she faltered on. "Your anger is just--the end of the
world for me, Dick. I can't face it. It tears my very self."

"My darling! My own love!" he said.

"And then--and then--I had such an awful doubt of you, Dicky. I thought
your love was dead, and I thought--and I thought I couldn't hope to
hold you--after that. I'd got to free you somehow. Oh, Dicky, what agony
love can be!"

"Hush, darling, hush!" he said.

She lay in his arms, her eyes looking straight up to his. "I never meant
to do it, dear,--never meant to win your love in the first place. I
always knew I wasn't worthy of it. I think I told you so. Dicky, listen!
I've had a horrid life. My mother was divorced when Muff and I were
youngsters at school. My father died only a year after, and no one ever
cared what happened to us after that. We had an aunt--Lady Beatrice
Farringmore--and she launched me in society when I left school. But she
never cared--she never cared. She was far too busy with her own concerns.
I just went with the crowd and pleased myself. No one ever took anything
seriously in our set. It was just a mad rush of gaiety from morning till
night. We were like a lot of empty-headed, mischievous children, horribly
selfish of course, but not meaning any harm--at least not most of us.
Everyone had a nickname. It was the fashion. It was Saltash who first
called me Juliet. He said I was so tragically in earnest--which was
really not true in those days. And I called him Charles Rex."

She paused, for Dick's arms had tightened about her.

"Go on!" he said, in a low voice. "I suppose he--made love to you, did
he?"

"Everyone did that," she said. "He was just a specimen of the
rest--except that I always somehow knew he had more heart. It was just a
game with us all. It used to frighten me rather at first till--till I got
used to it. When I was quite young I had rather a bitter lesson. I began
to care for a man who I thought was in earnest, and I found he wasn't.
After that, I never needed another. I played the game with the rest.
Sometimes I hurt people, but I didn't care. I always said it was their
fault for being taken in."

"That doesn't sound like you," he said.

"That was me," she returned, with a touch of recklessness,