"Always you are thinking of my well-being, my worldly benefit. It is for that you give me your companionship, your protection. I—I don't know—sometimes I think I have never been—so—lonely——"
Her voice broke; she turned sharply from him and stood with slender hands clenched in the starlight.
"Philippa?" he said gently, in his kindly, even voice. And it seemed to break the barrier to her reserve.
"Oh!" she faltered. "—It is something else a woman—hopes for—something different—when her heart—is empty——"
He dared not understand her, dared not touch her. He heard himself saying: "There is nobody but you, Philippa," and dared not speak—dared not say what he should have said before either he or she had learned who she really was.
Perhaps a faint idea of what held him to an aloofness, a formality unaccustomed, occurred to her during the strained silence. Perhaps she divined, vaguely, what might be in his mind.
After a while she turned, not looking at him, and took his arm! It was the first time she had done so since that day when he painted her.
Even yet she could scarcely realize, scarcely comprehend the great change which had come to her. She knew it was true; she understood that it must be the truth—that she was no longer nameless—not the foundling, not the lonely child of chance who had looked out blankly over the world, without aim, without interest, having nothing to expect, nothing to hope for from a world which had not even bestowed upon her a name.
And now—now, suddenly hazard had snatched aside that impenetrable curtain which, as long as she could remember, had hung between her and all that she desired most passionately to know.
From the loose, half palsied lips of a murderer had fallen the words she had never expected to hear. He had gone to his death, shambling, doddering, mumbling to himself. But the papers which had belonged to him had confirmed every word he uttered.