"No, I won't. Because if you cared enough for me you wouldn't let that kind of a wall remain between us——"
"I ask you not to talk about such——"
"You wouldn't," he insisted, smiling. "Nor is there now any reason why such a man as I am becoming, and ultimately will be, should not tell you that he cares——"
"Please—if you please—I had rather not——"
"So," he concluded, still smiling, "the matter, as it stands, is rather plain. You don't care for me enough. I love you—I don't know how much, yet. When a girl interposes such an occult barrier and a man comes slap up against it, he's too much addled to understand exactly how seriously he is in love with the unknown on the other side."
He spoke in a friendly, almost impersonal way and, as though quite thoughtlessly, dropped his left hand over her right which lay extended along the back of the seat. And the contact seemed to paralyse every nerve in her body.
"Because," he continued, leisurely, "the unknown does lie on the other side of that barrier—your unknown self, Strelsa—undiscovered as yet by me——"
Her lips moved mechanically:
"I wrote you—told you what I am."
"Oh, that?" He laughed: "That was a mood. I don't think you know yourself——"