"How can I leave you?" he said, breaking into his old kindness again. "I ought to go, but it is like leaving a girl in the hands of torturers. If there were only some one to be with you here until all this is over!"
"There is no one. I want no one."
"You puzzle me deeply," he said, walking up and down with troubled anxiety. "I can form no opinion as to whether your dread is purely imaginary or not, because you tell me nothing. If you were an ordinary woman, I should not give much thought to what you say—or rather to what you look, for you say nothing; but you are not ordinary. You are essentially brave, and you have fewer of the fantastic, irrelevant fancies of women than any girl I have ever known. There must be something, then, to fear, since you fear so intensely. I like you, Anne; I respect you. I admire you too, more than you know. You are so utterly alone in this trouble that I can not desert you. And I will not."
"Do not stay on my account."
"But I shall. That is, in the city; it is decided. Here is my address. Promise that if you should wish help or advice in any way—mark that I say, in any way—you will send me instantly a dispatch."
"I will."
"There is nothing more that I can do for you?"
"Nothing."
"And nothing that you will tell me? Think well, child."
"Nothing."