"You have not been to blame," said Hagar. "I don't think either of us was to blame. I think it was an honest mistake. I think we took a passing lightning flash for the sun in heaven.... Mr. Laydon, that evening in the parlour at Eglantine and the morning after, when we walked to the gate, and the road was sunny and lonely and the bells were ringing, oh, then I am sure I loved you--" She drew her hand across brow and eyes. "Or, if not you, I loved--Love! But after that, oh, steadily after that, it lessened--" "'Lessened'!--You mean that you are not in love with me as you were?" "I am not in love with you at all. I was in love with you, or.... I was in love. I am not now." She struck her staff against the rock. "I almost hope I'll never be in love again!" Across from a cleared hillside, steep and grassy, came a tinkling of sheep-bells. The sun hung low in the west and the trees cast shadows across the road. A vireo was singing in a walnut tree, a chipmunk ran along a bit of old rail fence. A zephyr brought an odour dank and rich, from the aged forest that hung above. "I think," said Laydon, "that you are treating me very badly." "Am I? I am sorry.... You mustn't think that I haven't been wretched over all this. But it would be treating you badly, indeed, if I were such a coward as to let it go on." She looked at him oddly. "Will you be--Are you much hurt?" "I--I--" said Laydon. "I do not think you quite conceive what you are saying, nor what such a cool pronunciamento must mean to a man! Hurt? Yes, I am hurt. My pride--my confidence in you--my assurance that I had your heart and that you had put your life in my keeping--the love that I truly felt for you--" "'Felt.'--You loved me, loving you. Oh," said Hagar, "I feel so old--so old!" "I loved you sincerely. I imperilled my position for you--to a certain extent, all my prospects in life. I had delightful visions of the day when we should be finally together--the home you would make--the love and protection I should give you--" "You are honest," said Hagar, "and I like honesty. If I have done you any wrong at all, if I have made life any harder for you, if I have destroyed any ideals, if I have done you the least harm, I very heartily beg your pardon." Laydon drew from his pocket a small box and opened it. "I had brought you that--" Hagar took it in her hand and looked at it. "It is lovely!" she said. "A diamond and a sapphire! And it isn't going to be wasted. You keep it. Sooner or later you'll surely need it. You couldn't have bought a prettier one." She looked up with a soft, bright, almost maternal face. "You don't know how much happier I am having faced it, and said it, and had it over with! And you--I don't believe you are so unhappy! Now are you--now are you?" "You have put me in an absurd position. What am I to say--"