He went to the windows and drew the curtains.  She watched him silently.  As he turned back into the room, she spoke.

“Trevor, are you angry with me?”

He paused, as if the question were unexpected.  “No,” he said, after a moment.

Her eyes shone unnaturally bright in the twilight.  “You understand that—­that I couldn’t obey your wishes about not seeing—­Bertrand—­before he left?”

“I did not forbid you to see him,” he said.

“But—­you are vexed because I did,” she persisted.

He came quietly back to her.  “I believe you did the only thing possible to you,” he said, in a tone she could not fathom.  “Therefore there is no more to be said.  Won’t you lie down?”

She complied without further words.  He covered her with a rug, but she shivered under it as one with an ague.  He brought a quilt, and laid that also over her.

She reached out then, and caught his hand.  “Trevor, forgive me!”

He bent over her.  “My dear, I am not angry with you.”

“Ah, but—­but—­” She broke off helplessly; there was something about him that unnerved her.  Suddenly and inexplicably the longing surged over her to be caught to his breast and held there safe from all the tumult, the misery, the vain regrets, that tortured her quivering soul.  But she could not tell him so, could not bring herself to pour out all the truth.  For the first time she saw how wide was the gulf that had opened between them—­that gulf which he had tried in vain to span the night before—­and her heart died within her.  She knew that she was powerless, that now in the hour of her adversity, now when she felt her need of a protector and comforter as never before, she dared not confide in him, dared not throw herself upon his mercy, and trust to his generosity to understand and to forgive.

And so she could only hold his hand very tightly, too agitated to utter any plea, afraid to keep him, yet even more afraid to let him go, lest, apart from her, that dread gulf should widen into an abyss too terrible for contemplation.

He waited for a little beside her, to give her agitation time to subside.  But it only increased till it became so painfully obvious that he could ignore it no longer.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked her gently.  “I am quite ready to listen to you.  Only don’t be so distressed.  Really there is no need.”

His tone was perfectly kind, but the caressing note she was wont to hear in it was absent.  She shivered afresh, conscious of a chill.  She could not answer him; her throat seemed incapable of producing sound.

A while longer, with absolute patience, he waited.  Then; “I think you must let me go, dear,” he said.  “I am doing you more harm than good just now.  By and bye, when you are calmer, we will have a talk.”