“A secret?  Are you going to tell me a secret?”

Dudley smiled very faintly, and then his expression suddenly changed.  Something like a spasm of fear and of pain shot quickly across his face, frightening her a little.  Then he shook his head.

“No,” said he.  “I hardly think you will consider it a secret, after what you have just told me.  I am only going to tell you this:  I have had a great trouble, a great affliction, hanging over me for some time now.  Sometimes I have thought it was going to clear away and leave me as I was before.  Sometimes I have felt myself quite free from it, and able to go on in the old way.  But with this consciousness, this knowledge hanging over me always, I have behaved in all sorts of strange ways, have hurt the feelings of my friends, have not been myself at all.  You know that, Queenie.”

Queenie slowly bowed her head.  Mrs. Wedmore and Max, still occupied in their search for the missing soup tickets, had now extended their operations to the hall, and left the room in possession of the other two.  Dudley went on with his confession.

“And now something has happened which has cut me off from my old self, as it were.  I don’t know how else to express what I mean.  I came down last night with the intention of speaking to—­to Doreen for the last time, of trying to explain myself, if not to—­to justify myself to her.  You know what I mean, don’t you?”

Again Queenie bowed her head.  Her father’s suspicions as to Dudley’s perfect sanity had, of course, reached her ears, and she felt so much pity for the poor fellow whose confession she was then hearing that she dared not even raise her eyes to his face again.  He went on, hurrying his words, as if anxious to get his confession over: 

“But I thought it all over last night, and I decided to say nothing to her, after all.  I don’t think I could, without making a fool of myself.  For you know—­you know my feelings about her; everybody knows.  I had hoped—­Oh, well, you know what I hoped—­”

There was a pause.  Dudley was afraid of breaking down.

“Oh, Dudley, is it really all over, then, between you?  Oh, it is dreadful!  For, you know, she cares, too!”

“Not as I do.  I hope and think that is impossible,” said Dudley, hoarsely.

There was another pause, a longer one.  Then Queenie gave utterance to a little sob.  Dudley, who was sitting on the table at which she was at work, got upon his feet with an impatient movement.  His dark face looked hard and angry.  As he paced once or twice up and down the small space available in the disordered room, the inward fight which was going on between his passion and his sense of right convulsed his face, and Queenie shuddered as, glancing at him, she fancied she could see in the glare of his black eyes the haunting madness at which he seemed so plainly to have hinted.

She rose in her turn.

“But, Dudley—­” she began.