He went on to Montagu Street, so convinced was he that Julia was mistaken.

Freda knew well what she was going to say to him. She had chosen her path, the highest, the farthest from the abyss. Once there she could let herself go.

He himself led her there; he started her. He brought praises of the gift.

Other people, he said, were beginning to rave about it now.

"I wish they wouldn\'t," said she. "It makes me feel so dishonest."

"Dishonest?"

"As if I\'d taken something that didn\'t belong to me. It doesn\'t belong to me."

"What doesn\'t?"

"It—the gift! I feel as if it had never had anything—really—to do with me."

"Ah, that\'s the way to tell that you\'ve got it."

"I know, but I don\'t mean that. I mean—it does belong so very much to somebody else, that I ought almost to give it back."

He had always wondered how she did it. Now for one moment he believed that she was about to clear up her little mystery. She was going to tell him that she hadn\'t done it at all, that somebody else had borrowed her name for some incomprehensible purpose of concealment. She was going to make an end of Freda Farrar.

"Of course," she said, "I know you don\'t want it back."

"I?" [Pg 46]

"Yes. It\'s really yours, you know. I should never have had it at all if it hadn\'t been for you."

"I\'m very glad," he said gravely, "if I\'ve helped you."

He was thinking, "She does really rather pile it on."

Freda went piling it on more. She felt continuously that the gift would see them through. She would hold it well before him, and turn it round and round, that he might see for himself that there was nothing that could be considered sinister behind it. Her passionate concentration on it would show that there was nothing behind, no vision of anything darker and deeper. It was as if she said to him, "I know the dreadful thing you\'re afraid of. I\'m showing you what it is, so that you needn\'t think it\'s that."

Not that she was afraid of his thinking it. She had set her happiness high, in a pure serene place, safe from the visitations of his terror. She conceived that the peace of it might in time come to constitute a kind of happiness for him. That gross fear could never arise between him and her. All the same, she perceived that a finer misgiving might menace his perfect peace. He might, if he were subtle enough, imagine that she was giving him too much, and that he owed her something. His chivalry might become uneasy. She must show him how perfectly satisfied she was. He must see that the thing she had hold of was great, was immense, that it filled her life to the brim, so that there wasn\'t any room for anything else. How could he owe her anything when he had given her that?

She must make him see it very clearly.

"It wasn\'t only that you helped," she said, "to bring it out of me. It wasn\'t in me. When it came, it seemed to come from somewhere outside. Somebody must [Pg 47] have put it into me. I believe such a thing is possible. And there wasn\'t anybody, you know, but you."

"I doubt," said he, "the possibility. Anyhow, you may safely leave me out of it."

"Think," she said, "think of the time when you were left out of it, when it was only me. It\'s inconceivable—the difference——"

"Let\'s leave it at that. Why rub the bloom off the mystery?"

"Do I rub the bloom off?"

"Yes, if you make out that I had anything to do with it."

"If it\'s mystery you want, don\'t you see that\'s the greatest mystery of all—your having had to do with it?"

"But why should I, of all people? Is there any sign of Freda Farrar in anything I did before I knew her?"

"Is there any sign of her in anything she did before she knew you?"

He was silent.

"Then," said Freda, "if it isn\'t you it\'s we. We\'ve collaborated."

If he had not been illumined by the horrid light Julia had given him he would have said that this was only Freda\'s way, another form of her adorable extravagance. Now he wondered.

Poor Freda went on piling up her defenses. "Don\'t you see?" said she. "That\'s why I feel so sure of it. If it had been just me, I should never have been sure a minute. It might have gone any day, and I should have known that there was no more where it came from. But, if it\'s you, I can simply lean back on it and rest. Don\'t you see?"

"No," he said, "I don\'t see." [Pg 48]