His voice suddenly broke; he dropped down on the couch beside her, imprisoning her clasped hands on her knees.  His emotion, the break in his voice, excited them both.

“Are you trying to frighten me and take me by storm?” she demanded, forcing a smile.  “What is the matter, Duane?  What do you mean by peril?...  You are scaring me——­”

“Little Geraldine—­my little comrade!  Can’t you understand?  It isn’t only my selfish desire for you—­it isn’t all for myself!—­I care more for you than that.  I love you more deeply than a mere lover!  Must I say more to you?  Must I even hurt you?  Must I tell you what I know—­of you?”

“W-what?” she asked, startled.

He looked at her miserably.  In his eyes she read a meaning that terrified her.

“Duane—­I don’t—­understand,” she faltered.

“Yes you do.  Let’s face it now!”

“F-face what?” Her voice was only a whisper.

“I can tell you if you’ll love me.  Will you?”

“I don’t understand,” she repeated in white-lipped distress.  “Why do you look at me so strangely?  And you tell me that I—­know....  What is it that I know?  Couldn’t you tell me?  I am—­” Her voice failed.

“Dear—­do you remember—­once—­last April that you were—­ill?...  And awoke to find yourself on your own bed?”

“Duane!” It was a cry of terror.

“Dearest!  Dearest!  Do you think I have not known—­since then—­what has troubled you—­here——­”

She stared at him in crimsoned horror for an instant, then with a dry sob, bowed her head and covered her face with desperate hands.  For a moment her whole body quivered, then she collapsed.  On his knees beside her he bent and touched with trembling lips her arms, her knees, the slim ankles desperately interlocked, the tips of her white shoes.

“Dearest,” he whispered brokenly, “I know—­I know—­believe me.  I have fought through worse, and won out.  You said once that something had died out in me—­while I was abroad.  It did not die of itself, dear.  But it left its mark....  You say self-control is only depravity afraid....  That is true; but I have made my depravity fear me.  I can do what I please with it now; I can tempt it, laugh at it, silence it.  But it cost me something to make a slave of it—­what you saw in my face is the claw-mark it left fighting me to the death.”

Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid knees with his lips.

“I need you, Geraldine—­I need all that is best in you; you must love me—­take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you.  I’ll love you so confidently that we’ll kill it—­you and I together—­my strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself.”

He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent almost double, and covering her face with both hands.  He bent over her, one knee on the divan.