“Nothing will come between us,” he said simply, and then after a pause:  “So there is a mystery.”

“I’m—­I’m afraid so.”

“Ah, I knew it.  I figured it out from a lot of little things.  That’s all I’ve had to do here, and—­for instance, I said to myself:  ’How the devil does she happen to speak English without any accent?’ You can’t tell me that the cousin of a poor wood carver in Belgium would know English as you do.  It’s part of the mystery, eh?”

“Why—­er,” she stammered, “I have always known English.”

“Exactly, but how?  And I suppose you’ve always known how to do those corking fine embroideries that the priests are so stuck on?  But how did you learn?  And how does it come that you look like a dead swell?  And where did you get those hands like a saint in a stained-glass window?  And that hair?  I’ll bet you anything you like you’re a princess in disguise.”

“I’m your princess, dear,” she smiled.

“Now for the mystery,” he persisted.  “Go on, what is it?”

At this her lovely face clouded and her eyes grew sad.  “It’s not the kind of mystery you think, Lloyd; I—­I can’t tell you about it very well—­because—­” She hesitated.

“Don’t you worry, little sweetheart.  I don’t care what it is, I don’t care if you’re the daughter of a Zulu chief.”  Then, seeing her distress, he said tenderly:  “Is it something you don’t understand?”

“That’s it,” she answered in a low voice, “it’s something I don’t understand.”

“Ah!  Something about yourself?”

“Ye-es.”

“Does anyone else know it?”

“No, no one could know it, I—­I’ve been afraid to speak of it.”

“Afraid?”

She nodded, and again he noticed that the pupils of her eyes were widening and contracting.

“And that is why you said you wouldn’t marry me?”

“Yes, that is why.”

He stopped in perplexity.  He saw that, in spite of her bravest efforts, the girl was almost fainting under the strain of these questions.

“You dear, darling child,” said Lloyd, as a wave of pity took him, “I’m a brute to make you talk about this.”

But Alice answered anxiously:  “You understand it’s nothing I have done that is wrong, nothing I’m ashamed of?”

“Of course,” he assured her.  “Let’s drop it.  We’ll never speak of it again.”

“I want to speak of it.  It’s something strange in my thoughts, dear, or—­or my soul,” she went on timidly, “something that’s—­different and that—­frightens me—­especially at night.”

“What do you expect?” he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, “when you spend all your time in a cold, black church full of bones and ghosts?  Wait till I get you away from there, wait till we’re over in God’s country, living in a nice little house out in Orange, N. J., and I’m commuting every day.”

“What’s commuting, Lloyd?”

“You’ll find out—­you’ll like it, except the tunnel.  And you’ll be so happy you’ll never think about your soul—­no, sir, and you won’t be afraid nights, either!  Oh, you beauty, you little beauty!” he burst out, and was about to take her in his arms again when the guard came forward to warn them that the time was nearly up, they had three minutes more.