"But remember, it was my only clue to you.

I mean," he added awkwardly, "it was the means of my finding you." "I don't see how it made you think of me, whom you never saw, to see another woman's profile," she retorted, with the faintest touch of asperity in her childlike voice.

"But," she added, more gently and with a relapse into her adorable naivete, "most people's profiles look alike." "It was not that," protested Key, still awkwardly, "it was only that I realized something--only a dream, perhaps." She did not reply, and they continued on in silence.

The gray wall of the convent was already in sight.

Key felt he had achieved nothing.
Except for information that was hopeless, he had come to no nearer understanding of the beautiful girl beside him, and his future appeared as vague as before; and, above all, he was conscious of an inferiority of character and purpose to this simple creature, who had obeyed him so submissively.