"I cannot."
"We come back to the same point again," said Orsino.
"We always shall, if you talk about this. There is no other issue. Things are what they are and I cannot change them."
"Do you know," said Orsino, "that all this mystery is a very serious hindrance to friendship?"
Maria Consuelo was silent for a moment.
"Is it?" she asked presently. "Have you always thought so?"
The question was a hard one to answer.
"You have always seemed mysterious to me," answered Orsino. "Perhaps that is a great attraction. But instead of learning the truth about you, I am finding out that there are more and more secrets in your life which I must not know."
"Why should you know them?"
"Because—" Orsino checked himself, almost with a start.