She paused, and Henry, looking into her face, said:
"I haven't been good to you. I'm ashamed because these weeks have all gone by and I haven't helped you yet. But you needn't say why do I come and why am I your friend. I love you. I loved you the first moment I saw you in Piccadilly. I've never loved anybody before and I feel now as though I shall never love anybody again. But I will do anything for you, or go anywhere. You only have to say and I will try and do that."
Her gaze came inwards, leaving those wide unscaleable horizons whither she had gone and travelling back to the simple untidy face of Henry whose eyes at any rate were good enough for you to be quite sure that he meant honestly all that he said. "That's it," she said quickly. "That's what I must try to explain to you. I've wanted to say to you before that perhaps I have made you think what isn't true. I like you. You're the only friend I've had since I came to England. But I can't love you, you dear good boy, nor I can't love anybody. I will not forget you if I can once get out of this horrible place, but I have no thoughts of love—not for any one—until I can come home again.
"You saw me crying just now. I should not cry; my father used to say, 'Christina, always be strong and not show them you're weak,' but I cry, not from weakness, but from deep, deep shame at that woman and what you see in her house."
She suddenly took his hand. "You are not angry because I don't love you? You see, I have only one thought—to get home, to get home, to get home!"
Henry choked in his throat and could only stare back at her and try to smile.
"Well, then," she said smiling. "Now I will try to tell you how I am. That woman—that horrible woman—whom they call my mother, and I too, to my shame, call her so—she was the wife of my father. From my birth she was cruel to me, she always hated me. When my father was at home she could not touch me—he would not allow her—but when he was at sea then she could do what she wished. My father was a hero, he was the finest of all Danish men, and when a Dane is fine no one in the world is as fine as he. He loved me and I loved him. Every one must love him, how he sang and danced and played like a child! After a time he hated the woman he'd married, because she was cruel, and he would have taken me away with him on his ship, but of course he could not. And then father was drowned—one night I knew it. I saw him. He came to my bed and smiled at me and he was all dripping with water. Then that woman was terrible to me, and my two uncles, father's brothers, who were almost as fine as he, tried to take me away, but she was too quick for them. And when they quarrelled with her, she ran away in the night and brought me over here."
Henry sighed in sympathy with her.
"Yes, and here it is terrible. I do not think I can endure it very much more. My uncle wrote and said he would come for me, and that is why I have been waiting, because I am sure that he will come.
"But now I think that woman is planning something else. She wants to sell me to some man so that she herself can be free. She is in doubt about several. That old man you saw the other day is one. He is very rich, and has a castle. Then she has been for some while in doubt about whether perhaps you will do. I don't care for it when she beats me, and when she says terrible things to me, but it is the fear of the future, and she may do worse than she has ever done—she threatens . . . and when I am alone at night—often all night—I am so afraid. . . ."