"I have said it to myself a thousand times since I left you at the temple. I did not intend to tell you; I had sworn you should never know it. What do you think of me?"
"I thought you called it love that sent you to Manila," she said wonderingly, wounding without malice.
"It was love, I say. I loved her better than all the world and I have not forgotten her. She will always be as dear to me as she was on the night I lost her. You have not taken her place. You have gone farther and inspired a love that is new, strange, overpowering--infinitely greater, far different from the love I had known before. She was never to me what you are. That is what drives me mad--mad, do you hear? I have simply been overwhelmed by it."
"I must be dreaming," she murmured.
"I have tried to hide it from myself, but it has broken down all barriers and floods the world for me."
"It is because we are here alone in this island--"
"No, no! Not that, I swear. It would have come sooner or later."
"You are not like other men. I have not thought of you as I see you now. I cannot understand being loved by you. It hurts me to see that you are in earnest. Oh, Hugh, how sorry I am," she cried, laying her hand upon his arm. His heart dropped like lead. He saw that he had been mistaken--she did not love him.
"You are learning that I am not the harlequin after all," he said bitterly.
"There is no one in all the world so good and strong and true."