"Taught me what?" she murmured.
"What I couldn't say," he replied, adding determinedly, as she would not help him, "how much I admired you."
She turned her face half way towards him with a little pathetic distrustful smile.
"Couldn't you see it?" he said.
Her under lip quivered as her mouth moved to answer him; then, as though afraid to trust the simplest word to it, she shook her head.
Caragh saw the quiver, and every fibre in him seemed resonant with that vibration; seemed to ring with pity and tenderness and shame, as a bell reverberates to a mere thread of sound.
The thing was happening which had never happened to him before; with which, in a varied adventure with women, he had never had to charge his soul; for, until to-day, he had not stolen wittingly a girl's love.
"I thought it was plain enough," he went on warily; "I couldn't have given my eyes much more to say."
"Oh, your eyes!" came her deprecation.
He waited a second.