"Well, I’d better be going, Ann," he said. "There is no telling when somebody might come along and see me here, and start the talk you hate so much. I come all the way here to tell you how low and mean I feel for taking Jane Hemingway’s word instead of yours, and how plumb sorry I am. You and me may never meet again this side of the Seat of Judgment, and I’ll say this if I never speak again. Ann, the only days of perfect happiness I ever had was here with you, and, if all of it was to do over again, I’d suffer torture by fire rather than believe you anything but an angel from heaven. Oh, Ann, it was just my poor, weak inferiority to you that made me misjudge you. If I’d ever been a _real_ man—a man worthy of a woman like you—I’d have snapped my fingers at all that was said, but I was obeying my laws, as you say. I simply wasn’t deep enough nor high enough to do you justice." He drew the little gate ajar and dragged his tired feet through the opening. The fence was now between them. She looked down the road. A woman under a sun-bonnet and little shawl was coming towards them. By a strange fatality it was Jane Hemingway, but she was not to pass directly by them, as her path homeward turned sharply to the left a hundred yards below. They both recognized her. "I don’t know fully what you mean, Joe," Ann said, softly, "but if you mean by what you just said that you’d be willing now to—to come back—if _that’s_ what you mean, I’d have something to say that maybe, in justice to myself, I ought to say." "_Would_ I come back? Would I? Oh, Ann, how could you doubt that, when you see how miserable and sorry I feel. God knows I’d never feel worthy of you; but if you would—if you only could—let me stay, I—"