“And yet she brought you my message?” pursued his companion.  “That seems her nature—­violent passions, yet thorough loyalty.  But time is precious.  I must urge on you what I bade you come to hear.  It is to implore you to put your trust, your confidence in Philip.  You have acknowledged to me that you are guiltless—­no one who knows what you once were could ever doubt it for an instant—­then let him hear this, let him be your judge as to what course is right and what wrong for you to pursue.  It is impossible for me to return to Europe knowing you are living thus and leaving you to such a fate.  What motive you have to sentence yourself to such eternal banishment I am ignorant; but all I ask of you is, confide in him.  Let him learn that you live; let him decide whether or not this sacrifice of yourself be needed.  His honor is an punctilious as that of any man on earth; his friendship you can never doubt.  Why conceal anything from him?”

His eyes turned on her with that dumb agony which once before had chilled her to the soul.

“Do you think, if I could speak in honor, I should not tell you all?”

A flush passed over her face, the first that the gaze of any man had ever brought there.  She understood him.

“But,” she said, gently and hurriedly, “may it not be that you overrate the obligations of honor?  I know that many a noble-hearted man has inexorably condemned himself to a severity of rule that a dispassionate judge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary.  It is so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should do a dishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, that he may very well overestimate the sacrifice required of him through what he deems justice or generosity.  May it not be so with you?  I can conceive no reason that can be strong enough to require of you such fearful surrender of every hope, such utter abandonment of your own existence.”

Her voice failed slightly over the last words; she could not think with calmness of the destiny that he accepted.  Involuntarily some prescience of pain that would forever pursue her own life unless his were rescued lent an intense earnestness, almost entreaty, to her argument.  She did not bear him love as yet; she had seen too little of him, too lately only known him as her equal; but there were in her, stranger than she knew, a pity, a tenderness, a regret, an honor for him that drew her toward him with an indefinable attraction, and would sooner or later warm and deepen into love.  Already it was sufficient, though she deemed it but compassion and friendship, to make her feel that an intolerable weight would be heavy on her future if his should remain condemned to this awful isolation and oblivion while she alone of all the world should know and hold his secret.