ust tell me!" Her hand was still on his arm.

"I cannot."

"Why can you not?"

"Why?"

"Can't you trust me?"

"Trust you!" he cried. He turned to her and seized her hands. "You
ask me to--trust you!"

"Yes; I've trusted you. Can't you believe as much in me?"

"Believe in you, Miss Santoine!" He crushed her fingers in his grasp.
"Oh, my God, I wish I could!"

"You wish you could?" she echoed. The tone of it struck her like a
blow, and she tore her hands away. "What do you mean by that?"

He made no reply but stood staring at her through the dark. "We must
go back," he said queerly. "You're cold."

She did not answer but started back up the path to the house. He
seemed to have caught himself together against some impulse that
stirred him strongly. "The man out there who saw us? He will report
to your father, Miss Santoine?" he asked unsteadily.

"Reports for Father are first made to me."

"I see." He did not ask her what she was going to do; if he was
assuming that her permission to exceed his set limits bound her not to
report to her father, she did not accept that assumption, though she
would not report to the blind man to-night, for she knew he must now be
asleep. But she felt that Eaton was no longer thinking of this. As
they entered the house and he helped her lay off her cape, he suddenly
faced her.

"We are in a strange relation to each other, Miss Santoine--stranger
than you know," he said unevenly.

She waited for him to go on.

"We have talked sometimes of the likeness of the everyday life to war,"
he continued. "In war men and women sometimes do or countenance things
they know to be evil because they believe that by means of them there
is accomplished some greater good; in peace, in life, men--and
women--sometimes do the same. When the time comes that you comprehend
what our actual relation is, I--I want you to know that I understand
that whatever you have done was done because you believed it might
bring about the greater good. I--I have seen in you--in your
father--only kindness, high honor, sympathy. If I did not know--"

She started, gazing at him; what he said had absolutely no meaning for
her. "What is it that you know?" she demanded.

He did not reply; his hand went out to hers, seized it, crushed it, and
he started away. As he went up the stair--still, in his absorption,
carrying cap and overcoat--she stood staring after him in perplexity.

CHAPTER XVII