She bent her head.
"I don't know what it means," he went on passionately. "I haven't the faintest idea what it means. I love you--that's all. You mean everything to me. But I can't ask you to marry me. It wouldn't be fair." A thought of Mr. Chesterton rushed across his mind. "I--I can barely keep myself in rooms like these. I couldn't keep you. So I suppose I haven't a moment's right to say one of these things to you. But I had to say them. You knew I was going to say them--didn't you--Jill--my Jill--you knew--didn't you?"
She let him take both her hands in his; she let him drag them to his shoulders and press them there. But she bent her head forward. She hid her face from his. There was that which she had to tell him, things which she had to say, that must be told before he could blame himself any more for the love he had offered. She had known it was coming. He was quite right; she had known all he was going to say, realised it ever since that day when they had quarrelled in Kensington Gardens. All the moments between until this, had been a wonderful anticipation. A thousand times her breath had caught; a thousand times her heart had thumped, thinking he was about to speak; and through it all, just these few weeks or so, the anxious longing, the tireless praying that what she had now to say need never be said.
For a little while she let him hold her so. It would be the last time. God had been talking, or He had been sleeping, and St. Joseph--perhaps he had taken John's gift of generosity rather than that last candle of her's, for the petition she had made on that 18th of March in the Sardinia St. Chapel had not been answered.
Presently she looked up into his eyes.
"You mustn't blame yourself, John," she said gently. "It is I who deserve all the blame."
"Why?" he said--"why?"
"Because--not for the reason you said--but for something else, this is all impossible. I know it is the most wonderful thing that will ever be in my life. I know that. I'm sure of it. But something has happened since I saw you last, which makes it impossible for us to see each other again."
"Your people have found out? They forbid it?"
She shook her head.