Then: "Do you mean that you are in _love_ with me!" "Utterly, hopelessly--" his voice broke and he stood with hands clenched, unable to utter a word.
She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck and shoulders.

After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat: "I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady tones.

"And _that_ is what has come between us.

Do you think it is something we had better hunt down and destroy--this love that has come between us ?" "Is--is that _true_ ?" she asked in the awed voice of a child.
"It seems to be," he managed to say.

She slid stiffly to the floor and stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a schoolgirl.
"It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, "did it ?" She shook her head mechanically.
"Well, we know now.