Why had he been so eager to get her that he had never noticed how listless she was—how gently anxious to withdraw from his kiss? He called it all to mind now.... If Ben had not been away at sea—even then ... but he would have hated him a little sooner, that is all, and he would not have had those five years. It was no use hating him now, he was dead. And Milly was dead and could never tell the truth.... Never tell the truth? Why, she _had_ told it! In a flash there rose up before him the scene of her death-bed—the moment that he had thought till then was the bitterest that life could bring to him. “Ye won’t ’ate ’er, Tom! Ye won’t never visit it on _’er_, come what may! Oh, do promise me that!” she had cried. “’Tain’t _’er_ fault, no ways, Tom!” And he had promised, not knowing what he promised. She had been weak, delirious, he had thought, and he had supposed she had meant that he was not to hate the child for being the cause of the wife’s death. He remembered to have said in his haste that he _should_ so hate the little one, little guessing how it might ... how it _might_ come true! Yes, he remembered that he had said: “I couldn’t never forgive ’er, Milly, if ye was to die and leave me ’cos of ’er.” And then she had said what she had said. But of course he knew now what she had meant by her passionate prayer! And he had promised that which he could not perform! The little one moved and moaned in her sleep. He started instinctively towards her, the long habit of five years compelling; then remembrance rushed upon him and choked him, and he sat down again, moaning himself. Ah, could it be that those idle words of his were going to come true under this different stress—that he was going to hate her—his little maid whom he had reared and nursed as a mother nurses her first-born? Had he indeed blindly promised that which he could not perform? Remembrance rushed in upon him. Now that the veil was lifted the past lay vivid and hard before him, as the familiar marsh-land would lie to-morrow morning, when the kindly night had lifted her cloak and the whole world would smile, bright and garish, with never a covered place, with never a secret, and different, different from yesterday! It had been a good world on the whole till now, but now he was fain to say in his haste that it had never been good! For he remembered that Milly had never had any happiness in it save that which she had had apart from him; he remembered that her sunniest days had been those when the _Mary Jane_ was in port, and she had asked leave to walk down to the harbour to see her father; or when Ben Forester had come up to the village—never, as he recollected, consenting to come in to the cottage—but certainly, oh, most certainly wandering with _her_ along the quiet lanes, or upon the lonely downs while he was at work.