"Not often enough for me, Gabrielle," he declared, halting in the darkness and raising her soft little hand to his eager lips. "You know well enough how fondly I love you, how—"
"I know," she said in a sad, blank tone. Her own heart beat fast at his passionate words.
"Then why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "Is it because I have annoyed you, that you perhaps think I am not keeping faith with you? I know I was absent a long time, but it was really not my own fault. My people made me go round the world. I didn't want to, I assure you. I'd far rather have been up here at Connachan all the time, and near you, my own well-beloved."
"I believe you would, Walter," she answered, turning towards him with her hand upon his shoulder. "But I do wish you wouldn't reproach me for my undemonstrativeness each time we meet. It saddens me."
"I know I ought not to reproach you," he hastened to assure her. "I have no right to do so; but somehow you have of late grown so sphinx-like that you are not the Gabrielle I used to know."
"Why not?" And she laughed, a strange, hollow laugh. "Explain yourself."
"In the days gone by, before I went abroad, you were not so particular about our meetings being clandestine. You did not care who saw us or what people might say."
"I was a girl then. I have now learnt wisdom, and the truth of the modern religion which holds that the only sin is that of being found out."
"But why are you so secret in all your actions?" he demanded. "Whom do you fear?"
"Fear!" she echoed, starting and staring in his direction. "Why, I fear nobody! What—what makes you think that?"