"My boy, if you have your heart set on going to Maurice's, you shall go. But surely, after this mysterious time together in my house, and knowing that whatever you may be I welcome your companionship, you won't refuse my request to let me go with you? To say that I've enjoyed it would be to put a queer word to a terrible business that I have no way of understanding. But until you came I was bitterly, hungrily lonely—"
"Don't! Don't!" cried the boy. He had begun to tremble at the earnest tenderness of the voice. "I can't bear it! You don't know what you're talking about! Oh! let me go to Maurice's, and let me go alone! If you insist on going with me I can't stop you—"
"I do insist," said Mr. Montagu.
"But I can plead with you not to! And I can warn you what the price will be! Oh—" and he stretched out his hands in so imploring a gesture that his host could see the dull, dried blood of his cruelly injured wrists—"for God's sake, for God's sake, believe what I tell you! If you leave this house with me to-night, you're lost! Oh, God, God, I see you don't believe me! Tell me this, I beg of you, I demand of you—did you feel that I was in the hall to-night, before you opened the door?"
"Yes," said Mr. Montagu.
"Had I made any noise?"
"No."
"Then I can prove to you that I know what I'm saying! I did that! I made you feel me! Till after you let me in, I wasn't strong enough to make a sound! Yet I made you know I was there! Am I telling the truth, then? When I started to leave you, and now, even now, in warning you I was doing, I am doing, a more unselfish thing, a decenter thing, than any you've ever done in all your years of life! It's because I like you more than I want to! I'm unselfish, I tell you! I wanted you to go to Maurice's with me! I intended to make you, as I made you let me in! But if you do, you'll find me out! I'll tell you! I won't be able to conceal it! You'll know the truth about me! You've said all this was mysterious—for your own sake, let it stay so! You needn't think all truths are beautiful, and the truth about me is the most ghastly in the universe!"
"I want to find you out," said Mr. Montagu, steadying his voice. "I want to know the truth."
"By that cross and crown of thorns that mean so much to you and nothing at all to me," implored the boy, "don't go! I swear to you, mine is a more terrible secret than any living heart has ever held! You'll hate me, and I don't want you to! Oh, while I don't, while I'm merciful to you, believe me, and let me go alone! No loneliness that you could ever suffer would equal the price that you will pay if you go with me!"