Again Unorna laughed, so strangely that the sound of her own voice startled her.

“Why do you laugh like that?” he asked.

“Because what you say is so unjust to yourself,” she answered, nervously and scarcely seeing him where he sat.  “You seem to think it is all on your side.  And yet, I just told you that I was fond of you.”

“I think it is a fondness greater than friendship that we feel for each other,” he said, presently, thrusting the probe of a new hope into the tortured wound.

“Yes?” she spoke faintly, with averted face.

“Something more—­a stronger tie, a closer bond.  Unorna, do you believe in the migration of the soul throughout ages, from one body to another?”

“Sometimes,” she succeeded in saying.

“I do not believe in it,” he continued.  “But I see well enough how men may, since I have known you.  We have grown so intimate in these few weeks, we seem to understand each other so wholly, with so little effort, we spend such happy, peaceful hours together every day, that I can almost fancy our two selves having been together through a whole lifetime in some former state, living together, thinking together, inseparable from birth, and full of an instinctive, mutual understanding.  I do not know whether that seems an exaggeration to you or not.  Has the same idea ever crossed your mind?”

She said something, or tried to say something, but the words were inaudible; he interpreted them as expressive of assent, and went on, in a musing tone, as though talking quite as much to himself as to her.

“And that is the reason why it seems as though we must be more than friends, though we have known each other so short a time.  Perhaps it is too much to say.”

He hesitated, and paused.  Unorna breathed hard, not daring to think of what might be coming next.  He talked so calmly, in such an easy tone, it was impossible that he could be making love.  She remembered the vibrations in his voice when, a month ago, he had told her his story.  She remembered the inflection of the passionate cry he had uttered when he had seen the shadow of Beatrice stealing between them, she knew the ring of his speech when he loved, for she had heard it.  It was not there now.  And yet, the effort not to believe would have been too great for her strength.

“Nothing that you could say would be—­” she stopped herself—­“would pain me,” she added, desperately, in the attempt to complete the sentence.

He looked somewhat surprised, and then smiled.

“No.  I shall never say anything, nor do anything, which could give you pain.  What I meant was this.  I feel towards you, and with you, as I can fancy a man might feel to a dear sister.  Can you understand that?”

In spite of herself she started.  He had but just said that he would never give her pain.  He did not guess what cruel wounds he was inflicting now.