"Yes, she left town suddenly, giving me no reason for going. I have been able to do many things for her; things a friend could do. She is very fragile; she has been very ill, and now—I do not even know where she is. I can only surmise that the man, who is not worthy—needed her help—and she has done his bidding. Worthy or unworthy, her soul is wrapped up in him. Woman's love is a wonderful thing—almost incomprehensible to men!"
Unbidden, before Christina's mind, there rose a half-darkened room, a bed piled high with pillows, and lying back amongst the pillows, a woman with a beautiful, stricken face, and deep eyes of haunting sadness. Unbidden there came to her memory words spoken in a low passionate voice:
"You don't know what it means to care so much for a man, that, no matter what he is, or does, he is your world, your whole world."
And with the memory, came an illuminating flash of thought. Could it be possible—that the beautiful lady of the lonely valley, and the princess in the white gown, of whom this man spoke, were one and the same person? Her preoccupation with this thought made her silent for so long after Rupert's last speech, that presently he said quietly:
"I don't know why I am inflicting all this upon you, or why I have been egotistical enough to think my confidence could be in the smallest degree interesting, to somebody who is almost a stranger."
"A stranger?" Christina echoed the words blankly, then laughed a little tremulously.
"I had—forgotten—-we had only met so seldom," she said; "it—doesn't feel as if you were a stranger; and I am so glad, so proud, that you have trusted me. Some people from the very beginning don't seem like strangers, do they?" she asked, with a smile.
"That's quite true," he answered. "I am not a subtle person, I don't profess to be able to explain these things, but some people do seem to jump directly into one's friendship, whilst other people jog along beside us all our lives, and we get no nearer to them at last, than we were at first. You have been a friend to me to-day."
"Have I? I am glad," the colour rushed into her face, "and I wish I could help more." He smiled at her again. He still had the feeling that he was talking to a charming child, one of rarely sympathetic and understanding nature; and yet, through all the mist of masculine density in which he was wrapped, he was conscious of the womanly tenderness that had looked out of Christina's eyes, and spoken in her voice. That maternal instinct which is innately part of every good woman's nature, was largely developed in Christina, and, involuntarily, Rupert had made an appeal to that instinct. He would have laughed to scorn the bare idea that he, a strong and self-reliant man of the world, could ever lean, or need to lean, upon a slip of a girl, whose youthfulness was written in every line of her face, and of her slight form. And yet, unwittingly he had put out his hands to her for help, much as a little child puts out hands to its mother, for comfort and guidance.
Children all, these men-folk of the world! Children all, they have been from days immemorial, and presumably will be still the same in the days to come. And their womenkind love them, and comfort them, guide them and tend them, learning, with the sure instinct of womanhood, that they are just little boys, to be taken care of, and watched over, and "mothered" all the time. Christina knew this truth instinctively, if she could not have put it into definite words; Christina knew it; each daughter of Eve knows it by experience bitter or sweet—it is the truth that "every woman knows"!