"You can't understand," she resumed, facing him with the steadiness of
despair. "You cannot understand--until you reach Adare House. And that
is what I dread, the hour when you will know what I am, and how
terrible it was for me to do what I did last night. If you were like
most other men, I wouldn't care so much. But you have been different."

He replied in words which he would not dare to have uttered a few hours
before.

"And yet, back there when you first asked me to go with you as your
husband, you knew what I would find at Adare House?" he asked, his
voice low and tense. "You knew?"

"Yes."

"Then what has produced the change that makes you fear to have me go
on? Is it because"--he leaned toward her, and his face was
bloodless--"Is it because you care a little for me?"

"Because I respect you, yes," she said in a voice that disappointed
him. "I don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to go back into the
world thinking of me as you will. You have been honest with me. I do
not blame you for what happened last night. The fault was mine. And I
have come to you now, so that you will understand that, no matter how I
may appear and act, I have faith and trust in you. I would give
anything that last night might be wiped out of our memories. That is
impossible, but you must not think of it and you must not talk to me
any more as you have, until we reach Adare House. And then--"

Her white face was pathetic as she turned away from him.

"You will not want to," she finished. "After that you will fight for me
simply because you are a knight among men, and because you have
promised. There will not even be the promise to bind you, for I release
you from that."

Philip stood silent as she left him. He knew that to follow her and to
force further conversation upon her after what she had said would be
little less than brutal. She had given him to understand that from now
on he was to hold himself toward her with greater restraint, and the
blood flushed hot and uncomfortable into his face as he realized for
the first time how he had overstepped the bounds.

All his life womanhood had been the most beautiful thing in the world
to him. And now there was forced upon him the dread conviction that he
had insulted it. He did not stop to argue that the overwhelming
completeness of his love had excused him. What he thought of now was
that he had found Josephine alone, had declared that love for her
before he knew her name, an