“Child,” he said, still with the hard look on his face, “child, are you an angel or a stone? Have you a heart or have you none? If after all you are just like other women; utterly incapable of entering into the depths a man’s one love; at least you should pity what you cannot understand, instead of maddening me with that conventional humbug about mutual respect and so on. Who but a woman would talk so at such a time? But I will do as you wish,” he went on, lashing himself into fury against her, “I will not stay here longer to tempt you by my evil presence to outrage your delicate sense of propriety, or to say one word which hereafter you might consider it had not been perfectly ‘correct’ or ‘ladylike’ to utter. Good God! what a fool I have been! I had imagined you somewhat different from other women, but I see my mistake. It shall be as you wish. Good bye. You shall not again be distressed by the sight of me. Truly you do well to despise me.” And with a bitter sneer in his voice, he turned away. It was at last too much. The girl threw herself down recklessly on the rough garden-seat. She shed no tears, she was not the sort of woman to weep in such dire extremity of anguish. She shook and quivered as she lay there, but that was all. But soon the thought came over her “was it not better so?” Better that Ralph should thus cruelly misjudge her, for in the end it might help him to forget her. Forget her—yes. This was what she must now pray for, if her love for him were worthy of the name. “Ah but he might have said good-bye gently,” broke forth again from the over-charged heart. “He might have spoken kindly when it was for the last, last time.” As the wish crossed her thoughts, and she half unconsciously murmured it in words, she felt that some one was beside her. An arm raised her gently and replaced her on the seat. It was Ralph again. Something in his touch soothed and quieted her. She did not this time shrink from him in alarm, but for a moment leant her throbbing head restfully on his shoulder. “Marion, my poor child. Marion, my lost darling, forgive me.” “Forgive you, Ralph? Yes, a thousand times, yes,” she replied. “But do not so grievously misjudge me. It is no conventional humbug, as you call it. It is the old plain question of right and wrong.”