“Why?” I asked.  “Surely it is strange to give her, of all, a special privilege and confidence?”

Eveena was silent.  She could in no case have reproached me in words, and even the reproach of silence was so unusual that I could not but feel it keenly.  I saw at that moment that for whatever had happened or might happen I might thank myself; might thank the doubt I would not avow to my own mind, but could not conceal from her, that Eveena had condescended to something like jealousy of one whose childish simplicity, real or affected, had strangely won my heart, as children do win hearts hardened by experience of life’s roughness and evil.

“I know nothing,” Eveena said at last:  “yet somehow, and wholly without any reason I can explain, I fear.  Eive, you may remember, has, as your companion, made acquaintance with many households whose heads you do not believe friends to you or the Zinta.  She is a diligent correspondent.  She never affects to conceal anything, and yet no one of us has lately seen the contents of a note sent or received by her.”

There was nothing tangible in Eveena’s suspicion.  It was most repugnant to my own feelings, and yet it implanted, whether by force of sympathy or of instinct, a misgiving that never left me again.

“My own,” I answered, “I would trust your judgment, your observation or feminine instinct and insight into character, far sooner than my own conclusions upon solid facts.  But instincts and presentiments, though we are not scientifically ignorant enough to disregard them, are not evidence on which we can act or even inquire.”

“No,” she said.  “And yet it is hard to feel, as I cannot help feeling, that the thunder-cloud is forming, that the bolt is almost ready to strike, and that you are risking life, and perhaps more than life, out of a delicacy no other man would show towards a child—­since child you will have her—­who, I feel sure, deserves all she might receive from the hands of one who would have the truth at any cost.”

“You feel,” I answered, “for me as I should feel for you.  But is death so terrible to us?  It means leaving you—­I wish we knew that it does not mean losing for ever, after so brief an enjoyment, all that is perishable in love like ours—­or it would not be worth fearing.  I don’t think I ever did fear it till you made my life so sweet.  But life is not worth an unkindness or injustice.  Better die trusting to the last than live in the misery and shame of suspecting one I love, or dreading treacherous malice from any hand under my own roof.”

When I met Davilo the next morning, the grave and anxious expression of his face—­usually calm and serene even in deepest thought, as are those of the experienced members of an Order confident in the consciousness of irresistible secret power—­not a little disturbed me.  As Eveena had said, the thunder-cloud was forming; and a chill went to my heart which in facing measurable and open peril it had never felt.