Helen Muir from her seat at the window looking into the thick leafage of the trees saw him turn at the entrance and heard him mount the steps. The days between them and approaching separation were growing shorter and shorter. She thought this every morning when she awakened and realised anew that the worst of it all was that neither knew how short they were and that the thing which was to happen would be sudden--as death is always sudden however long one waits. He had never reached even that _beginning_ of the telling--whatsoever he had to tell. Perhaps it was coming now. She had tried to prepare herself by endeavouring to imagine how he would look when he began--a little shy--even a little lovably awkward? But his engaging smile--his quite darling smile--would show itself in spite of him as it always did. But when he came into the room his look was a new one to her. It was not happy--it was not a free look. There was something like troubled mental reservation in it--and when had there ever been mental reservation between them? Oh, no--that must not--must not be _now_! Not now! He sat down with his cap in his hand as if he had forgotten to lay it aside or as if he were making a brief call. "What has happened, Donal?" she said. "Have you come to tell me that--?" "No, not that--though that may come any moment now. It is something else." "What else?" "I don't know how to begin," he said. "There has never been anything like this before. But I must know from you that a--silly woman--has not been telling me spiteful lies. She is the kind of woman who would say anything it amused her to say." "What was it she said?" "I was dragged into a house by Clonmel. He said he had promised to drop in to tea. There were a lot of people. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was there and began to talk to me." "Why did you think she might be telling you spiteful lies?" "That is it," he broke out miserably impetuous. "Perhaps it may all seem childish and unimportant to you. But you have always been perfect. You were the one perfect being. I have never doubted you--" "Do you doubt me now?" "Perhaps no one but myself could realise that a sort of sore spot--yes, a sore spot--was left in my mind for years because of a wretched thing which happened when I was a child. _Did_ you deliberately take me back to Scotland so suddenly that early morning? Was it a thing which could have been helped?" "I thought not, Donal. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I was right." "Was it because you wanted to separate me from a child I was fond of?" "Yes." "And your idea was that because her mother was a flighty woman with bad taste and the wrong surrounding her poor little girl would contaminate me?" "It was because her mother was a light woman and all her friends were like her. And your affection for the child was not like a child's affection." "No, it wasn't," he said and he leaned forward with his forehead in his hands.