By a refinement of love's cunning he will await her here; and, on the very foot of ground that witnessed their separation, he will receive her into his arms again. She has pushed the gate now, and, like himself, she is within the enclosure; her white gown (he has often praised her in white, and she must have put it on since he left her) flitting like a snow-winged dove, along the dusky walk towards him. 'What an odd place you have chosen to say your prayers in!' cries a high-pitched voice. 'BETTY!' For, by one of Fate's juggles, it is the old and not the new love to whom his radiant greeting is addressed. It is the old and not the new love whom, if his arms clasp any woman under the stars to-night, they must enfold. They do not, indeed, show much readiness to do so. They hang as if palsy-struck at his sides, while his voice repeats in a horrified whisper that he would fain, if he could, make one of incredulity, '_Betty!_' 'Do not trouble yourself to repeat it a third time,' says she, with a flighty laugh that has yet no tinge of mirth in it. 'I do not need convincing that _I_ am _I_, nor need you.' '_You_ here?' 'I may return the compliment--_you_ here?' He is staring at her with wide, shocked eyes that are also full of an astonishment he is powerless to master. Is _this_ the Betty he had parted from on that awful Christmas morning? _this_ the wretched woman, clammy-handed, dishevelled, reckless of all save her own mastering agony, who--her haggard mother-eyes unable to attain the boon of any tears--had hoarsely forbidden him her presence for ever? Can this be she--this hovering vision of lace and gauze--that has floated towards him on the wings of the night, and now lifts to his, eyes that in this light look as clear as Peggy's--cheeks whose carnations seem no less lovely and real? Before his confused consciousness, the two visions--of _that_ Betty and of _this_--inextricably entangled, and yet irrevocably separated, pass and repass; and he continues standing, wordlessly, stupidly staring, in a horror and a wonder that are beyond the weight of his volition to conquer, at the woman before him. After her last sentence she is wordless too, and also stands looking at him, mute and full, as if she had forgotten his face, and were learning it off by heart again, her factitious gaiety for the moment died down and gone in the silent starlight. It is he who first speaks. 'You--you came here to see your children?' 'To see my children?' repeats she. 'Ha! ha! Yes, that was the reason I gave at home; and a very pretty and laudable one too, was not it? To see my children! But, as it happens, a woman has often more than one reason. I had more than one.'