Sally walked with an effort across to the armchair with the rushed seat and sank quietly into it.

“I only mean it was foolish,” she explained, “because it was a silly thing to do, the first time that I come to your rooms, for me to faint like that.  Do you think you’ll feel inclined to ask me again?  Isn’t it natural that a man should hate a scene of that kind?  I only hope that you won’t think I easily faint; I don’t; I’ve never—­”

Traill leant forward on his knees.  Understanding was dawning in him, it burnt a light in his eyes.

“Do you want to come again, then?” he asked.

So keen was he upon getting his answer, that he could not see the climax of hysteria towards which he was bringing her.  But against that she was fighting, most fiercely of all.  Like the rising water in a gauge, it was leaping in sudden bounds within her.  But to break into tears, to murmur incoherently between laughter and sobbing that it could not be helped, but she loved him, wildly, passionately, would give every shred of her body into his hands if he would but take it—­against this, in the sweating of her whole strength, she was battling lest he should guess her secret.

“Do you want to come again, then?” he repeated, when she continued to look at him with frightened eyes, saying nothing.

“Yes, of course; of course I do.”

“But why—­why?” he insisted.

This reached the summit of his cruelty—­blind cruelty it may have been—­but it dragged her also to the climax of her mood.  Like the falling of the Tower of Babel, with its crumbling of dust and its confusion of tongues, she tumbled headlong from her pinnacle of strength.

“Oh, don’t, please!” she moaned, and then in torrents came the tears; in an incoherent toppling of sound, the little cries of her weeping rushed from her; and Traill, hurled from the sling of impulse, was kneeling at her feet.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he kept on saying; “I’m awfully sorry.”

Even then he but vaguely understood, had not rightly guessed the verge upon which she was treading.  It was not that she feared he might guess the secret in her heart.  If, as she half believed, he loved her too, what real harm could be done by that?  It was the fear that, in this unsexing moment of hysteria, she might lose all control, pitch all reserve and modesty into the flood-tide of her emotions, and lose him for ever in the unnatural whirlwind of her passion.  Against that she fought, needing only the release from the tension of his questions.  When he began, in his futile efforts to make amends, to ply them again, she rose hurriedly to her feet.

“Can I go into the other room for a moment?” she asked; “or will you go and leave me here alone—­just for a minute or two?”

He stood up.  “I’ll do anything you like,” he said.

“Then, go—­just for a moment.”