Once more he got up abruptly, walking to the further end of the arbor and back again. She thought she had angered him. When he spoke, it was standing, the green pathway between them, instead of at her side. "You've beaten me, Margaret," he said, with a shake of the head. He was looking down at her with a half satirical smile on his lips. But it was of the lips only. There was no lightening of the gloom in the eyes bent upon her. "I wonder if you know how complete my rout has been." She looked up quickly. "You gave him to me voluntarily." "Yes. I gave him to you voluntarily. And therein lies your victory. If the case had been brought to issue and decided against me there would have been excuse for my defeat. As it is, I have simply been beaten--by a woman. And the Almighty." "It is hard to fight against the Almighty." "Yes. And as hard, I find, to fight against a woman in the right. Perhaps the two mean the same thing. I rather think they do." Then a tinge of bitterness came into his voice. "Of course the world--your world and mine--will have pleasant things to say about this latest chapter in the scandal of De Jarnette vs. De Jarnette. The natural inference, brutally stated, will be that I gave him up when I found that I might have a blind child on my hands. I couldn't expect them to say otherwise. The world judges by appearances and appearances are certainly against me. Well! I don't care much about what it thinks. The world and I have never been on very good terms. I have hated it and it has hated me ... I am more concerned about what--" His eyes with their dumb pleading finished the sentence and she answered them. "You know I do not think it," she said. "I have thought hard and bitter things about you--and with cause--but not that. I have never for one moment thought that." He took a step across the arbor with outstretched hand, grasping the one she gave him as man grasps the hand of man. Then dropping it he went back to his place opposite her. "You have a right to think hard things about me," he said. "I have been hard. I never intended to let my heart soften to you. I meant to hold out to the last. But,--" She broke the silence that fell upon them then by saying: "There is one thing I want to ask you before I go away and this may be our last talk together. Why--_why_ have you been so bitterly cruel to me?" He looked at her but did not answer. "At first," she went on, "I thought it was from something hard in your nature,--or because you hated me,--or bore something up against me, I could not tell what. But since we have been together over Philip, and I have seen how gentle you are with him, it does not seem that you could ever have been wantonly cruel, nor that you--quite--hated me. What was the reason?" "Miss Margaret! _Oh_, Miss Margaret!" It was Mammy Cely's voice, and at this moment her rotund form appeared at the entrance to the arbor. "Here's a letter fur you."