"You shock me," she exclaimed, in perfect earnestness, a cloud gathering in her eyes. "I hope you do not believe in such ugly and dangerous doctrines." Immediately he gathered in his straying thoughts and crushed down the memory that was nagging at his consciousness. He felt with sudden clearness how easily he might turn away from him the confiding earnestness of this sensitive woman, and attract from her instead the interest born of a doubtful sort of fascination. "I don't believe in them," he smilingly answered. "I was merely giving rein to an idle whim of the moment. On the contrary, I believe in perfect frankness in all things. Confession and forgiveness are together the safety-valve of society, as they are chief among the Christian virtues." "Yes," she said, with a sort of relief in her tone. "There is as much to ask as to grant in that law. I could not quite respect myself if I should deceive any one, and I should feel it a triumph of duty over the strongest bias of my nature if I should thoroughly forgive one who had willfully deceived me." "But you would forgive such an one," he hastily exclaimed, looking almost eagerly into her eyes. "I should feel it incumbent upon me to try with all my might," she responded. "One who would deceive you in a matter of any moment," he observed, with a warmth and vehemence that fairly startled her, "would deserve never to know forgiveness. He would be a monster outside the limitations of the Christian code." "You shouldn't say that," she replied, a pink spot appearing on either cheek. "It would be a great deal worse to deceive some one more ignorant and much weaker than I. I have had many opportunities, denied to a large number of young women. I ought to know better how to evade the evils of falsehood and deceit." Reynolds did not speak for some minutes. A swell of the fragrant south wind came through the window, and the first mocking bird of the season was singing in a magnolia tree at the further angle of the house. The drowsy charm of spring's earliest stirrings hovered in the sky, the air, the far-spreading fields and the shimmering glimpses of water. Something like the warning of a distant, scarcely audible voice was ringing in his ears. Below his dreamy happiness he could feel the beginnings of a vague uneasiness. "I know, I know," he presently said, and he did not realize the almost brutal directness of his words, "yours was a bitter and burning disappointment. You deserved every thing that you hoped for, nothing that you received." Her face grew pale and flushed at once, so that the spot on either cheek shone like carmine on a milk-white ground. She looked helplessly at him with her lips slightly parted and her eyes beaming, as if through a haze.