"It is right that I should be very frank with you," she went on, "for I am going to ask you to help me."
"You need me, then?" said Warrisden. There was a leap in his voice which brought the colour to her cheeks.
"Very much," she said; and, with a smile, she asked, "Are you glad?"
"Yes," he answered simply.
"Yet the help may be difficult for you to give. It may occupy a long time besides. I am not asking you for a mere hour or a day."
The warning only brought a smile to Warrisden's face.
"I don't think you understand," he said, "how much one wants to be needed by those one needs."
Indeed, even when that simple truth was spoken to her, it took Pamela a little while to weigh it in her thoughts and give it credence. She had travelled a long distance during these last years down her solitary road. She began to understand that now. To need--actually to need people, to feel a joy in being needed--here were emotions, familiar to most, and no doubt at one time familiar to her, which were, nevertheless, now very new and strange. At present she only needed. Would a time come when she would go further still? When she would feel a joy in being needed? The question flashed across her mind.
"Yes," she admitted, "no doubt that is true. But none the less there must be no misunderstanding between you and me. I speak of myself, although it is not for myself that I need your help; but I am not blind. I know it will be for my sake that you give it, and I do not want you to give it in any ignorance of me, or, perhaps"--and she glanced at him almost shyly--"or, perhaps, expecting too much."
Warrisden made no other answer than to lean forward in his chair, with his eyes upon Pamela's face. She was going to explain that isolation of hers which had so baffled him. He would not for worlds have interrupted her lest he should check the utterance on her lips. He saw clearly enough that she was taking a great step for her, a step, too, which meant much to him. The actual explanation was not the important thing. That she should confide it of her own accord--there was the real and valuable sign. As she began to speak again, diffidence was even audible in her voice. She almost awaited his judgment.