your face again,--never, living or dead! I want no sham farce of
friendship between us, benefits given or received: your hand touching
mine as it might touch Bone's or David Gaunt's; your voice cooing in my
ear as it did just now, cool and friendly. It maddened me. Rest can
scarcely come from you to me, now."

"I understand you. I am to go back, then? It was a long road,--and cold,
Douglas."

He stopped abruptly, looked at her steadily.

"Do not taunt me, child! I am a blunt man: what words say, they mean, to
me. Do you love me, Theodora?"

She did not speak, drawn back from him in the opposite shadow of the
door-way. He leaned forward, his breath coming hurried, low.

"Are you cold? See how shaggy this great cloak is,--is it wide enough
for you and me? Will you come to me, Theodora?"

"I did come to you. Look! you put me back: 'There shall be no benefits
given or received between us.'"

"How did you come?"--gravely, as a man should speak to a woman, childish
trifling thrust aside. "How did you mean to take me home? As a pure,
God-fearing woman should the man she loved? Into your heart, into your
holiest thought? to gather strength from my strength, to make my power
your power, your God my God? to be one with me? Was it so you came?"

He waited a minute. How cold and lonely the night was! How near rest and