'I tell you that it was all an accident,' he repeats, with a doggedness born of his despair. 'I can give no other explanation.' 'And that is none,' she replies, a wave of indignation sending back the colour to her ashy cheeks, and steadying her shaking limbs as she again turns to leave the room. He does not, as before, throw himself in her way; he remains standing where he is, and only says in a dull voice: 'Are you going?' 'Why should I stay?' 'Going without saying good-bye?' 'I will say good-bye if you wish.' 'Going for--_for good_?' 'Yes.' He makes no effort to change her resolution--vents no protest--if that indeed be not one, and the strongest he could utter, that long groan with which he flings himself on a chair beside the table, and covers his face with his hands. She has reached the door. No one hinders her from opening it and leaving him, and yet she hesitates. Her sunk blue eyes look back at him half relentingly. 'Are you sure,' she says quaveringly, while her pale lips tremble piteously--'are you sure that you have nothing to say--nothing extenuating? I--I should be glad to hear it if you had. I--I--I--would try my very best to believe you.' There is no answer. Only the mute appeal conveyed by that prone figure, with its despairing brown head fallen forwards on its clenched hands. Is it possible that he has not heard her? After a moment's vacillation, she retraces her uncertain steps till she stands beside him. Feeling her proximity, he looks up. At the sight of his face, she gives a start. Can it be she herself--she that had thought to have loved him so kindly--who has scored these new deep lines on brow and cheek? At the relenting evidenced by her back-coming, his dead hopes revive a little. 'Do you know what I did when I reached the walled garden last night?--I am afraid that you will not think the better of my common sense--I knelt down and kissed the place where I thought that your feet might have trod last year.' 'You did?' she says, with a catch in the breath; 'you did? and yet five minutes afterwards you were--oh!' breaking off with a low cry; 'and this is what men are like!'