they were at first. I seemed to hear you talking in them." He
stopped as if withholding himself from what he had nearly said without
intending, and resumed: "It's some comfort to know that you didn't want
them back because you doubted me, or my good faith."

"Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Langbourne," said Barbara compassionately.

"Then why did you?"

"I don't know. We--"

"No; _not_ 'we.' _You!_"

She did not answer for so long that he believed she resented his
speaking so peremptorily and was not going to answer him at all. At last
she said, "I thought you would rather give them back." She turned and
looked at him, with the eyes which he knew saw his face dimly, but saw
his thought clearly.

"What made you think that?"

"Oh, I don't know. Didn't you want to?"

He knew that the fact which their words veiled was now the first thing
in their mutual consciousness. He spoke the truth in saying, "No, I
never wanted to," but this was only a mechanical truth, and he knew it.
He had an impulse to put the burden of the situation on her, and press
her to say why she thought he wished to do so; but his next emotion was
shame for this impulse. A thousand times, in these reveries in which he
had imagined meeting her, he had told her first of all how he had
overheard her talking in the room next his own in the hotel, and of the
power her voice had instantly and lastingly had upon him. But now, with
a sense spiritualized by her presence, he perceived that this, if it was
not unworthy, was secondary, and that the right to say it was not yet
established. There was something that must come before this,--something
that could alone justify him in any further step. If she could answer
him first as he wished, then he might open his whole heart to her, at
whatever cost; he was not greatly to blame, if he did not realize that
the cost could not be wholly his, as he asked, remotely enough from her
question, "After I wrote that I was coming up here, and you did not
answer me, did you think I was coming?"

She did not answer, and he felt that he had been seeking a mean
advantage. He went on: "If you didn't expect it, if you never thought
that I was coming, there's no need for me to tell you anything else."

Her face turned towards him a very little, but not so much as even to
get a sidelong glimpse of him; it was as if it were drawn by a magnetic
attraction; and she said, "I didn't know but you would come."

"Then I will tell you why I came-