"Frighten you? I mean to. And you frighten me. It's because we're so close … leaning over into the gulfs of each other… . Don't you like it, don't you want it? Don't you see there's no difference anymore between you and me?"

She drew away from him. "My poor Vance—I see only what is. It's my curse."

His heart fell with a thump. All of a sudden she seemed hopelessly far away, spectral and cold. Inexperienced as he was, he knew this was no clever feint, that she was not playing with him. There was a fearless directness in her voice.

"You mean to tell me," he cried, "that you're all right? That your life is full enough without me?" She made no answer, and he burst out: "I shouldn't believe you if you did!"

The exclamation brought a faint smile to her lips. "I won't then. What would be the use? And what difference would it make? I'm here—you're there. It's not our nearness to each other that frightens me; it's the leagues and leagues between—that is, when you begin to talk like this… ."

"Haven't you always known I was going to talk like this?" he interrupted her.

"I suppose I have … but I hoped it wouldn't be for a long time… ."

"Well, it's been a long time since I began to love you." Again she was silent. "You remember Thundertop?"

"Oh, Vance—even then?"

"Even before, I guess. The first time I read poetry or looked at a sunset you must have been mixed up with it. I didn't have to wait to see you."

She had sunk back into her armchair and sat there with her hands over her eyes. He wanted to snatch them away, to kiss her on the lids and lips; but there hung between them the faint awe of her presence. She was the woman his arms longed for, but she was also the goddess, the miracle, the unattainable being who haunted the peaks of his imagination.

"She's sorry for me, that's all," he thought bitterly.

Other fellows, he felt, would have known how to break through the barrier; he had no such arts, and probably no experience of life would instruct him. There was an absoluteness in his love which benumbed him, now that his exaltation had fallen. It had always seemed to him that on the pinnacles there was just room to kneel and be mute.

Halo Tarrant dropped her hands and looked up at him between narrowed lids. She was excessively pale; her face looked haggard, almost old. "Oh, Vance," she murmured, "take care… ."

"Take care?"

"Not to spoil something perfect. This free friendship. It's been so—exquisite."

The blood rushed back to his heart, and his eyes were blurred with happy tears. They choked in his throat, and he stood looking at her with a kind of desperate joy.

"I've never once called you by your name, even," he stammered out.