uch things yet!"

Like lightning he had grasped her arm. "You mean you _will_ talk of
them?" Then as he began to take the flood of assent from her eyes: "You
_will_ listen to me? Oh, you dear, you dear--when, when?"

"Ah, when it isn't mere misery!" The words had broken from her in a
sudden loud cry, and what next happened was that the very sound of her
pain upset her. She heard her own true note; she turned short away from
him; in a moment she had burst into sobs; in another his arms were round
her; the next she had let herself go so far that even Mrs. Gereth might
have seen it. He clasped her, and she gave herself--she poured out her
tears on his breast; something prisoned and pent throbbed and gushed;
something deep and sweet surged up--something that came from far within
and far off, that had begun with the sight of him in his indifference
and had never had rest since then. The surrender was short, but the
relief was long: she felt his lips upon her face and his arms tighten
with his full divination. What she did, what she _had_ done, she
scarcely knew: she only was aware, as she broke from him again, of what
had taken place in his own quick breast. What had taken place was that,
with the click of a spring, he saw. He had cleared the high wall at a
bound; they were together without a veil. She had not a shred of a
secret left; it was as if a whirlwind had come and gone, laying low the
great false front that she had built up stone by stone. The strangest
thing of all was the momentary sense of desolation.

"Ah, all the while you _cared_?" Owen read the truth with a wonder so
great that it was visibly almost a sadness, a terror caused by his
sudden perception of where the impossibility was not. That made it all
perhaps elsewhere.

"I cared, I cared, I cared!" Fleda moaned it as defiantly as if she were
confessing a misdeed. "How couldn't I care? But you mustn't, you must
never, never ask! It isn't for us to talk about!" she insisted. "Don't
speak of it, don't speak!"

It was easy indeed not to speak when the difficulty was to find words.
He clasped his hands before her as he might have clasped them at an
altar; his pressed palms shook together while he held his breath and
while she stilled herself in the effort to come round again to the real
and the right. He helped this effort, soothing her into a seat with a
touch as light as if she had really been something sacred. She sank into
a chair and he dropped before