I asked her the reason of her visit to that house of mystery and the meaning of the symbol of the bear cub, but she hesitated, just as she had done before. Ah! how blind is man to the beginning of any series of great consequences!
All our previous conversation passed through my mind like a flash, and I saw how utterly I had failed to convince her of my good intentions in her interest.
The curious breach between father and daughter was inexplicable, just as much as their secret presence in London or their association with that dingy house in Harpur Street.
“I know that in ordinary circumstances the small knowledge you have of me would cause you to hesitate to allow me to become your confidential friend,” I went on in deep earnestness. “But these circumstances are surely extraordinary ones. You are in distress, threatened by enemies who terrorise you, and are driving you to despair; and I believe I am also right in suggesting that you possess no friends?”
She had grown paler, and I knew my words made an impression upon her. We were then walking in the crowd of Oxford Street, and I was compelled to bend and speak confidentially to her, lest others might overhear. Surely that great busy thoroughfare was a strange place in which to court a woman’s love! But love is always one of life’s ironies. Many are the world’s wonders; but surely Honour, Conscience, and Love are the three greatest. They will never be explained, and never cease to be bewildering. Of such are the source and the end of what is wonderful in our life—the sea and the shower, the aggregate whereof is in God and the atom in man.
I saw from her countenance, and knew from the trembling of her hand, that she would confide in me if only she dared. The mystery of it all was maddening. My natural intuition told me that she was not averse to my companionship, yet the mention of her secret—whatever it was—caused the truth to arise before her in all its hideousness, holding her transfixed by the crisis that she knew must inevitably ensue.
“It is true,” she sighed at last. “I am in sore need of a friend; but I fear your help is impossible. Indeed, if our friendship were known to certain persons it would place me in a position of even graver peril.”
“Then your enemies would be mine,” I remarked quietly. “This is as it should be. But why would my association with you place you in peril? I don’t understand.”
“Oh!” she cried, “I cannot explain. I would tell you everything if I could—everything. But I cannot, for your sake as well as for my own.”
“For my sake?” I echoed. “Would knowledge of it affect me so gravely?”