"Oh, I'll cheerfully admit it. If you weren't you'd detest me—perhaps despise me."
"Men don't detest or despise a hurt and frightened child."
"But a selfish and cowardly woman? What does a man of your sort think of her?"
"I don't know," he said. "Whatever you are I can't help loving you."
She strove to laugh but her mouth suddenly became tremulous. After a while when she could control her lips she said:
"I want to talk some more to you—and I don't know how; I don't even know what I want to say except that—that——"
"What, Strelsa?"
"Please be—kind to me." She smiled at him, but her lips still quivered.
He said after a moment: "I couldn't be anything else."
"Are you very sure?"