I will say it once again: Fear.

.

.

." He added after a pause, "There can be not the slightest doubt of her courage.

But she distinctly uttered the word fear." There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.
"A person of imagination," he began, "a young, virgin intelligence, steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allegre's studio, where every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into shreds.