"I am glad," Maurice said abruptly.
The remark might have been called rude, but it was so simply made that it had the dignity belonging to any statement of plain truth. Neither rude nor polite, it was merely a cry of fact from an overburdened human soul. Lily felt that the words were forced from the young doctor by some strange agitation that fought to find expression.
"You wish—you wish—" she began.
Then she stopped. The flood of expression that welled up in her companion's face frightened her. She trembled at the thought of the hidden thing, the force, that could loose such a sea.
"What is it?" she said like a schoolgirl—or so, a moment afterwards, she feared.
"I ought not to tell you," Maurice said, "I ought not, but I must—I must."
He had got up and was standing before her. His back was to the fire, and a shadow was over his face.
"I want to tell you. You have made me want to. Why is that?"
He spoke as if he were questioning his own intellect for the reason, not asking it of her. And she did not try to answer his question.
"I suppose," he continued, "it is because you are the only human being who has partially understood that there is something with me that sets me apart from all my kind, from all the others."