“I cannot do that,” he faltered.

“Then it was some one who spoke to you of me,” she continued calmly.  “You need not trouble to contradict me.  Hadn’t you better hurry away before I have the chance to do you any harm?  There is one young man I know, of a melodramatic turn of mind, who persists in looking upon me as a sort of siren, calling my victims on to the rocks.  I expect that is the person with whom you have been talking.  Douglas Jesson, I think that I am a little disappointed in you.”

She stood up and smoothed out her skirts thoughtfully.

He was very near at that moment throwing all thoughts of Rice’s words to the winds, and retracting all that he had said.  After all, it was she who had brought him back from death.  Whatever his future might be, he owed it to her.  She looked into his eyes and felt that she had conquered.  Yet the very fascination of that smile which parted her lips was like a chill warning to him.

“I will tell you who it was who has been talking to me,” he said.  “It is a clerk of Drexley’s, a man named Rice.”

She nodded.

“I thought so.  Poor boy.  He will never forgive me.”

“For what?” Douglas asked quickly.  That was the crux of the whole matter.

“For his own folly,” she answered quietly.  “I was good to him—­helped him in many ways.  He tried to make love to me.  I had to send him away, of course.  That is the worst of you young men.  If a woman tries to help you, you seem to think it your duty to fall in love with her.  What is she to do then?”

“Can’t a woman—­always make it clear—­if she wants to—­that that sort of thing is not permitted?”

“Do you think that she can?  Do you think that she knows what she wishes herself until the last moment, until it is too late?”

Douglas rose up a little unsteadily.

“Take my own case,” he cried, with a sudden little burst of passion.  “You are the most beautiful woman whom I have ever seen, you are kind to me, you suffer me to be your companion.  Yet if I commit the folly of falling in love with you, you will dismiss me in a moment without a sigh.  I am only an ordinary being.  Don’t you think that I am wise if I try to avoid running such a risk?”

She laughed softly.

“What a calculating mortal.  Is this all the effect of Mr. Rice’s warning?”

Well, isn’t it truth?

She shook her head.

“I can’t pretend to say.  Do any of us really know, I wonder, what we would do under any given circumstances?  I wish you would tell me exactly what your friend complained of in my treatment of him.”

“He spoke—­not only of himself,” Douglas answered.  “There was a man called Silverton.”

“What?”

He looked across at her in swift surprise.  It seemed to him that her anger had suddenly changed into a wonderful and speechless terror.  Her left hand was buried in the sofa cushions, the pupils of her eyes were dilated, she was bloodless to the lips.  When she spoke it was hard to recognise her voice.