ed you," she said. "You were saying that when I spoke about
my window, although you were troubled on my account--"

"I felt at the same time some relief," Linforth continued.

"Relief?" she asked.

"Yes; for on my return from Ajmere this morning I noticed a change in
you." He felt at once Violet's hand shake upon his arm as she started;
but she did not interrupt him by a word.

"I noticed it at once when we met for the first time since we had talked
together in the garden, for the first time since your hands had lain in
mine and your lips touched mine. And afterwards it was still there."

"What change?" Violet asked. But she asked the question in a stifled
voice and with her face averted from him.

"There was a constraint, an embarrassment," he said. "How can I explain
it? I felt it rather than noticed it by visible signs. It seemed to me
that you avoided being alone with me. I had a dread that you regretted
the evening in the garden, that you were sorry we had agreed to live our
lives together."

Violet did not protest. She did not turn to him with any denial in her
eyes. She walked on by his side with her face still turned away from his,
and for a little while she walked in silence. Then, as if compelled, she
suddenly stopped and turned. She spoke, too, as if compelled, with a kind
of desperation in her voice.

"Yes, you were right," she cried. "Oh, Dick, you were right. There was
constraint, there was embarrassment. I will tell you the reason--now."

"I know it," said Dick with a smile.

Violet stared at him for a moment. She perceived his contentment. He was
now quite unharassed by fear. There was no disappointment, no anger
against her. She shook her head and said slowly:

"You can't know it."

"I do."

"Tell me the reason then."

"You were frightened by this business of the window."

Violet made a movement. She was in the mood to contradict him. But he
went on, and so the mood passed.

"It was only natural. Here were you in a frontier town, a wild town on
the borders of a wild country. A window bolted at dinner-time and
unlocked at bedtime--it was easy to find something sinister in that. You
did not like to speak of it, lest it should trouble your hosts. Yet it
weighed on you. It occupied your thoughts."

"And to that you put down my embarrassment?" she asked quietly. They had
come again to the window of the drawing-room.

"Yes, I do," he answered.

She looked at him strangely for a few mom