“Oh, he had gone off, across the fields.” “Before Arthur came up, do you mean?” “To be sure, some time before. However——” But, “No, Clement, I want to understand this,” she insisted, breaking in on him. Her voice betrayed her excitement, and to hold him to the point she laid her hands on his shoulders, standing before him and close to him. “Tell me again, and clearly. Do you mean that it was you who drove Thomas off? Before Arthur came up?” He stared. “Well, of course it was,” he said. “Didn’t you know that? Didn’t Arthur tell you?” She avoided the question, and instead, “Then it was your coat that was spoiled?” she said. “This coat?” “Well, of course it was. You can see that.” She looked at him, her cheeks flushed, her pride in him showing in her eyes. He had indeed justified her choice of him, her belief in him, her confidence in him. He had done this and had said nothing. The day was cold, and she was not warmly clad, but she felt no cold—now. It was raining, but she was no longer aware of it. There had sprung up in her heart, not only courage, but a faint, a very faint hope. He had come to dash her down, to fill her cup of sorrow to the brim, to leave her lonely in the world and comfortless—for never, never could she love another! And instead he had given her hope—a hope forlorn and far off, gleaming faint as the small stars in distant Cassiopeia, and often doubt, like an evening mist, would veil it. But it sparkled, she saw it, she drew courage from it. Meanwhile, surprised by the turn her thoughts had taken, he was still more surprised by the change in her looks, the color in her cheeks, the light in her eyes. He did not understand, and for a moment, seeing himself no hope but only sorrow and parting, he was tempted to think that she trifled. What mattered it what coat he wore, or what had stained it, or the details of a story old now, and which he supposed to be as well known to her as to him? Perhaps she did not comprehend, and, “Jos,” he said, inviting her to be serious, “do you understand that this is our parting?” But “No! no!” she said resolutely. “We are not going to part.” “But don’t you see,” sadly, “that I cannot go to your father now? That next week we may be beggars, and my father a ruined man? I could ask no man, even a poor man, for his daughter now. I must work to live, work as a clerk—as, I don’t know what, Jos, but in some position far removed from your life, and far removed from your class. I could not speak to your father now, and it is that which has brought me to you to—to say good-bye, dearest—to part, Jos! The gates are closed, we must go out of the garden, dear. And you”—he looked at her with yearning eyes—“must forgive me, before we part.” “Perhaps we are not going to part,” she said. He shook his head. He would not deceive her. “Nothing else is possible,” he said.