His eyes fell before her angry looks, and then she turned away abruptly, and went back to the table, as though he had been already gone, and he did go. She heard him gently shut the door, and slowly walk across the adjoining room. Before the last lingering step had died away, she was already steeped in the bitterness of remorse and self-rebuke. She had condemned him without a hearing. She called up the mute reproach of those mournful eyes that had been gazing on her, and pictured to herself what he had felt, when she had dismissed him thus. That day had separated them more than they had ever been before. He had not been able to go to sleep without talking it over, as they had always done. Now he had come innocently to her door, and had answered her enquiry without thinking--certainly without meaning mischief, and he had been sent away like a detected culprit; expiating, unawares, the outrage of another man, an hour before. She found it so intolerable to be alone with this remorse, that she fastened on her dress again, took up her light, and went into the sitting-room. She would have liked best to go straight up to his garret-room, to excuse the flightiness of her temper, and to beg him to forget it and forgive her, but from this, on reflection, she desisted. She would rather go downstairs to old Christel, she thought, and speak to her about some household matters; for which, to be sure, there was no hurry, but she was yearning for the sound of some familiar human voice. When she came to the landing place, she was not a little startled at seeing Walter sitting in the dark, on the upper steps, leaning his head upon both his hands. She could not be certain whether he was awake, or had fallen asleep; for he did not move when the door opened behind him. She set down her candlestick upon the top of the banisters, and in a moment she was seated by his side on the steps; he lifted up his head, and made a movement, as if he would have risen and taken flight. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I hardly know myself, how I came to be sitting here; but I will go upstairs directly--" "Stop one moment; pray do!" she whispered softly; "I am so glad to find you here; I had no peace after I had been so cross to you. Forgive me;--this has been an agitating day to me in many ways; there have been many things to pain me, and I made you suffer, poor dear, for what you could not help." He did not answer, but looked straight before him over the dark staircase. "Are you really angry with me?" she asked; he shook his head. "Angry with you, I never _could_ be, he said mournfully. "What was it that made you come to me so late?" she began again, after a short silence. "You wanted something, that I saw by your face, only just then, I was in such perplexity about my own affairs, as to seem cross and indifferent to those of others. Would you like to talk to me now?" "What good would that do? I shall hear it quite soon enough?" "Hear what?"