“I suppose you don’t care a damn for me—­that way!” he said, with a mirthless laugh.

“What!” she whispered, bewildered by his violence.  Then:  “Do you mean that you are in love with me!”

“Utterly, hopelessly—­” his voice broke and he stood with hands clenched, unable to utter a word.

She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck and shoulders.  After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat: 

“I love you better than anything in the world.” he said in unsteady tones.  “And that is what has come between us.  Do you think it is something we had better hunt down and destroy—­this love that has come between us?”

“Is—­is that true?” she asked in the awed voice of a child.

“It seems to be,” he managed to say.  She slid stiffly to the floor and stood leaning against the sofa’s edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a schoolgirl.

“It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be,” he asked, “did it?”

She shook her head mechanically.

“Well, we know now.  Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth after all.”

She only stared at him, fascinated.  No colour had returned to her cheeks.

He began to pace the hearth again, lip caught savagely between his teeth.

“You are no more amazed than I am to learn the truth,” he said.  “I never supposed it was that....  And it’s been that from the moment I laid eyes on you.  I know it now.  I’m learning, you see—­learning not to lie to myself or to you....  Learning other things, too—­God knows what—­if this is love—­this utter—­suffering—­”

He swung on his heel and began to pace the glimmering tiles toward her: 

“Discontent, apathy, unhappiness, loneliness—­the hidden ache which merely meant I missed you when you were not here—­when I was not beside you—­all these are now explained before your bed of justice.  Your court has heard the truth to-night; and you, Valerie, are armed with justice—­the high, the middle, and the low.”

Pale, mute, she raised her dark eyes and met his gaze.

In the throbbing silence he heard his heart heavy in his breast; and now she heard her own, rapid, terrifying her, hurrying her she knew not whither.  And again, trembling, she covered her eyes with her hands.

“Valerie,” he said, in anguish, “come back to me.  I will not ask you to love me if you cannot.  Only come back.  I—­can’t—­endure it—­without you.”

There was no response.

He stepped nearer, touched her hands, drew them from her face—­revealing its pallid loveliness—­pressed them to his lips, to his face; drew them against his own shoulders—­closer, till they fell limply around his neck.

She uttered a low cry:  “Louis!” Then: 

“It—­it is all over—­with us,” she faltered.  “I—­had never thought of you—­this way.”

“Can you think of me this way, now?”