To Kate, his silence became intolerable. She would have preferred reproaches, abuse, even violence--anything, in a word--to this leaden reticence. For it accused her more sharply than any words. Her lover had always been as an easy book to her keen intelligence, and she could read clearly enough that what kept his lips locked now was the conflict between his new knowledge and his old loyalty. In a flash she imagined Hawke's behaviour under the like circumstances and contrasted it with Gordon's bearing. Side by side the two men toed the line for her mental inspection, and the result was a feminine outcry against Fate, the Powers above and below--what you will, in a word, except her concrete self. "What brought you over here?" she cried. "You said you were going to Ravenglass. You told me so. What brought you over to Wastdale?" She spoke fiercely, almost vindictively, and it seemed as if the pair had suddenly changed places, as if she were the accuser and he the culprit, standing meekly self-condemned. Indeed, to complete the illusion, there was even a tinge of remorse in his tone as he answered her. "God, perhaps. Who knows?" "Oh! yes, yes, yes!" she went on. "Preach to me! Preach to me! Go on! Only be quick about it and make the sermon short!" "Don't, Kitty!" he said, and added, wistfully, "It can't be your true self that is speaking." "Yea, it is," she replied, struggling with a sense of pity for him (evoked by the quiet sadness of his voice). "My very own self, my real true self, that you have never known--that you never _would_ know. You always had wrong ideas about me. I tried to open your eyes at first, but it was no good, and I gave it up. You always dressed me up in virtues that didn't fit me. I used to feel as if I were wearing a strait-waistcoat." Gordon drew up a chair and sat opposite to her on the other side of the fireplace. "Then it was all my fault," he said. Kate glanced at him quickly, but there was no trace of irony in his manner. He was speaking quite seriously. As a matter of fact, it had just begun to dawn on him that a frank expectation of ideal behaviour is the most exacting form of tyranny a man can exercise over a woman.