"You _have_--haven't you ?--taken a particular interest ?" "Oh a particular interest!" she quavered out, feeling the whole thing--her headlong embarrassment--get terribly the better of her, and wishing, with a sudden scare, all the more to keep her emotion down.

She maintained her fixed smile a moment and turned her eyes over the peopled darkness, unconfused now, because there was something much more confusing.

This, with a fatal great rush, was simply the fact that they were thus together.

They were near, near, and all she had imagined of that had only become more true, more dreadful and overwhelming.

She stared straight away in silence till she felt she looked an idiot; then, to say something, to say nothing, she attempted a sound which ended in a flood of tears..