But his eyes remained perfectly clear and steady as they gazed straight into hers. There was not a shadow in them, not a quiver, as he replied quietly:
"No, Lou, I am shielding no one."
"It was you who killed that man—Philip de Mountford—or Paul Baker—whoever he may be?"
And he answered her firmly, looking steadily into her face:
"It was I."
She said nothing more then, but rose to her feet, and went quite close up to him. With a gesture that had no thought of passion in it, only sublime, motherly love, she took Luke's head in both her hands and pressed it to her heart.
"My poor old Luke!" she murmured.
She smoothed his hair as a mother does to an afflicted child; the motherly instinct was up in arms now, even fighting the womanly, the passionate instinct of a less selfless love. She bent down and kissed his forehead.
"Luke," she said gently, "it would do you such a lot of good if you would only let yourself go."
He had contrived to get hold of her hands: those hands which he loved so dearly, with their soft, rose-tinted palms and the scent of sweet peas which clung to them. His own hot fingers closed on those small hands. She stood before him, tall, elegant—not beautiful! Louisa Harris had never been beautiful, nor yet a fairy princess of romance—only a commonplace woman! A woman of the world, over whose graceful form, her personality even, convention invariably threw her mantle—but a woman for all that—with a passion burning beneath the crust of worldly sang-froid—with heart attuned to feel every quiver, every sensation of joy and of pain. A woman who loved with every fibre in her—who had the supreme gift of merging self in Love—of giving all, her soul, her heart, her mind and every thought—a woman who roused every chord of passion in a man's heart—the woman whom men adore!