"If there is any help I can give which is worth the asking and giving," said Tredennis, slowly, "you know it will be yours."
"Yes, I know it will be mine, and so I ask it easily. And what I ask is this. Let us walk slowly while we talk, and I will keep my hand on your shoulder,—I like to feel your support. What I would say is this: if you had been my son, you would have watched over her and stood between her and any pain which could threaten her. You know that what I fear for her now is only the desperate, hopeless misery such an experience as this would be sure to bring her if it were allowed to ripen; for her there is nothing else to fear. No, I know I need not have said that to you."
"No," answered Tredennis, "there was no need to say it."
"She does not know herself. I know her, and know what such an experience holds for her. Better that her life should be barren to the end than that she should bear what she must bear if her heart is once awakened."
"Better!" said Tredennis.
He felt the tremulous hand weigh heavily upon him.
"I am an old man," he was answered. "I have lived my life nearly to its close, and I say a thousand times better! I married a woman I did not love, and I loved a woman I could not marry."
"And you wished to ask me," said Tredennis, breaking the short silence which followed.
"I ask you to defend her against this pain. If I were a younger and stronger man, I might do for her what I ask of you; but I cannot often be with her. You are with her day after day. She likes you."
"I have fancied," Tredennis said, "that she did not like me."