He found Yeoland amid the pines. She had been to the forest grave and was returning towards the cliff when the man met her. She seemed whiter than was her wont, her dark eyes looking solemn and shadowy under their sweeping lashes. She seemed marvellously fair, marvellously pure and fragile, as she came towards him under the trees. Something in Fulviac’s look startled her. Women are like the sea to the cloudy moods of men, in that they catch every sun-ray and shadow. An indefinite something in the man’s manner made her restless and apprehensive. She went near to him with questioning eyes and laid her hand upon his arm. "You have had bad news?" "Nothing." "Something has troubled you?" "Perhaps." She looked at him pensively, a suspicion of reproach, pity, and understanding in her eyes. "Is it remorse, your conscience?" "My conscience? Have I had one!" "You have a strong conscience." "_Deo gratias_. Then you have unearthed it, madame." A vein of infinite bitterness and melancholy seemed to glimmer in his mood. It was a moment of self-speculation. The girl still looked up into his face. "Why did you kill that woman?" "Why?" "Her dead face haunts me, I see it everywhere; there is some strange shadow over my soul. O that I could get her last cry from my ears!" Fulviac, with a sudden burst of cynicism, broke into grim laughter, a sound like the rattling of dry bones in a closet. The girl shrank away with her lips twitching. "Why cannot you trust me with the truth?" "Truth is not always beneficent. It was a matter of policy, of diplomacy." "Why?" "Discords are bad at the eleventh hour. That woman could have half-wrecked our cause. It was policy to silence her and the man. I made sure of it by killing them." Yeoland’s face had a shadow of repugnance upon it; her eyes darkened. The man seemed in a callous, scoffing humour; it was mere glittering steel over the bitterness within. "You will tell me her name?" "What is it to you?" "She haunts me." "Forget her." "I cannot." "Have the truth if you will. She was the wife of the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault." The girl stood motionless for a moment; then swayed away several steps from Fulviac under the trees. One hand was at her throat; her voice came in a whisper. "What did she tell you?" "Many things." "Quick, do they touch me?" Fulviac choked an oath, and played with his sword. "Then there was some truth in her?" he said. The girl grew imperious. "I command you to tell me all." "Madame, the woman declared you were a traitress, and that this lordling, this Flavian of Gambrevault, loved you." "And you killed her----" "For your sake and the cause. She might have cast our Saint out of heaven." Yeoland went back from him and leant against a tree, with her hands over her eyes. Sunlight splashed down upon her dress; she shivered as in a cold wind, and could not speak. Fulviac’s voice, level and passionless, questioned her as she stood and hid her face.