So they return to the house, and he still shows no inclination to leave her. He draws a chair for her near an open window, and stands with his hand resting on the back. It is almost like the old times--the old times that he thinks of, "As dead men of good days, Ere the wrong side of death was theirs, when God Was friends with them." Something in the recollection of those days makes soft his voice, which is not wont to be soft. "You are not fit for this life," he says, stooping down his face towards her small wan one. "It requires a tough seasoned woman, in middle life. Tell me why you have undertaken it? Why are you not--not married?" She turns away, crimsoning painfully. "Because no one has asked me, I suppose," she answers, trying to speak banteringly. "But you were engaged when--when we parted?" "Yes." "And you are not now?" With ungovernable, unaccountable impatience, he awaits the slow brief answer. "No." "Had he then--h'm! h'm!--_discovered_ anything?" Gerard asks, finding some difficulty in framing the question politely. She fires up quickly. "_Discovered_ anything!" she repeats, indignantly. "Do you think it is impossible for me to be honest even _once_ in my life? I told him myself." "_You_ broke it off, then?" "No, I didn't." "_He_ did?" "Yes." "Poor fellow! he had good cause to be angry," says St. John; the old bitterness surging back upon him, as he reflects on the cowardly duplicity that had made waste two honest lives. "But he was _not_ angry," she cries, eagerly: "he was grieved--oh, _so_ grieved! Shall I ever forgive myself when I think of how he looked when I told him?" (her eyes gazing out abstractedly at the "Rape of the Sabines," as her thoughts fly back to that quarried nook on the bleak autumnal hillside, where she had broken a brave man's heart). "But he was not angry. Oh, no! he never thought of himself! he thought only about me! Ah! _that was_ love!" "He would not marry you, however?" says St. John, exasperated at these laudations, which he imagines levelled as reproaches against himself. "No," she answered quietly, "you are right; he would not marry me, though I begged him. But that was for my sake, too--not his own; he told me that he could not make me happy, for that I did not love him. He was wrong, though. I did love him--I love him now. If I did not love the one friend I have in all this great empty world, what should I be made of?" she concludes, while the tears come into her eyes. "You have a great capacity for loving," says St. John, who, though not usually an ungenerous fellow, is maddened by the expressions of affection, the tears and regretful looks bestowed upon his rival. "I envy, though I despair of emulating you." "Men have but _one_ way of loving," she answers, gently; "women have several. I love him as the one completely unselfish being I ever met. I agree with you, that the way of loving you mean comes but once in a lifetime."