h closed the door
Weir turned to him, the color springing into her face.

"Tell me," she said, peremptorily; "have you discovered what it
meant?"

He took her hand and led her over to the sofa. She sat down, but stood
up again at once. "I cannot sit quietly," she said, "until I _know_.
The enforced repression of the past week, the having no one to speak
to, and the mystery of that dream have driven me nearly mad. It was
cruel of you to stay away so long--but let that pass. There is only
one thing I can think of now--do you know anything more than when you
left?"

He folded his arms and looked down. "Why should you think I could
have learned anything at Crumford Hall?" he demanded, with apparent
evasion.

"Because of the restraint and sometimes incoherence of your letters.
I knew that something had happened to you; you seemed hardly the same
man. You seemed like--Oh, I do not know. For heaven's sake, tell me
what it is."

"Weir," he said, raising his head and looking at her, "what do you
think it is?"

She put up her hands and covered her face. "I do not know," she said,
uncertainly. "If there is to be any explanation it must come from you.
With me there is only the indefinable but persistent feeling that I
am not Weir Penrhyn but the woman of that dream; that I have no right
here in my father's castle, and no right to the position I hold in the
world. To me sin has always seemed a horrible thing, and yet I feel
as if my own soul were saturated with it; and what is worse, I feel no
repentance. It is as if I were being punished by some external power,
not by my own conscience. As if--Oh, it is all too vague to put into
words--Harold, _what_ is it?"

"Let us sit down," he said, "and talk it over."

She allowed him to draw her down onto the sofa, and he looked at her
for a moment. Then, suddenly, the purely human love triumphed. He
forgot regret and disgust. He forgot the teachings of the world, and
the ideal whose shattering he had mourned. He remembered nothing but
that this woman so close to him was dearer than life or genius or
ambition; that he loved her with all the strength and passion of
which a man is capable. The past was gone, the future a blank; nothing
remained but the glorious present, with its impulses which sprang
straight from the heart of nature and which no creed could root out.
He flung his arms about her, and the fierce joy of the moment thrilled
and shook him as he kissed her. And for the m