He rested his arm against the red trunk of the cedar and covered his eyes with his hand. Jacqueline stood, looking not at him but at the coloured round of garden. Her heart was fluttering, she knew not why. The moment that he asked went by and, dropping his arm, he turned upon her a face that he had not yet schooled to calmness. "The evening of the nineteenth of February," he said. "That was the last time we really met. Do you remember?" "Yes, I remember. It was the day of the deep snow." Cary regarded her mutely; then, "Yes, that was the important thing. We all remember it because of the snow. You were learning a new song that you promised to sing to me when I came again. But I never heard it--I never came again." "I know. Why was that?" "Do you ask?" he cried, and there was pain and anger in his voice. "I thought it not of you." The crimson surged over Jacqueline's face and throat. She bent toward him impetuously, with a quick motion of her hands. "Ah, forgive me!" she cried. "I know--I know. I was told of the quarrel next day in the coffee house. I--I was more sorry than I can say. I understood. You could not, after that, come again to the house. Oh, more than almost anything, I wish that you and Lewis were friends! It is wrong to try to make you think that that evening does not live in my memory. It does--it does!" "I am willing to believe as much," he returned, with a strange dryness. "I know that you remember that evening, but I hardly think it altogether on my account--" The colour faded from her cheek. "On whose, then? My husband's?" "And your guest's." "You were my guest." "Oh," cried Cary, "I'll not have it! You shall not so perjure yourself! He has taken much from me; if your truth is his as well, then indeed he has taken all! I know, I know who was the guest that night, the man with whom you supped, the 'client from the country.'" She gazed at him with large eyes, her hand upon her heart, then, with an inarticulate word or two, she moved to the gnarled and protruding roots of the cedar and took her seat there facing his troubled figure and indignant eyes. "Who was the guest,--the client from the country?" "Aaron Burr." She drew a difficult breath. "How long have you known?" "Since that night. No--do not be distressed! I learned it not from you,--you kept faithful guard. But when I left you, within the hour I knew it." "And--and if he were there, what harm?" Cary regarded her in silence; then, "The letter that I read you that night from your uncle, from one of the heads of your house, from a patriot and a man of stainless honour, that letter was, I think, sufficiently explicit! There was the harm. But Major Churchill's opinion, too, is perhaps forgot."