“Yes, I know,” he said. “You are a woman. You take the woman’s point of view. But I’m not defending myself. I’m just telling you the plain truth. I didn’t know when I went about poor Nan’s trouble. I had a letter from her three months after, telling me. She wanted to run away, to come and join me. It was a wild, hysterical sort of letter. It had taken six weeks to reach me, and it seemed likely she had changed her mind by that time. In any case I was just starting for an expedition into the Blue Mountains. I put her letter on one side to answer, but somehow I never did answer it. I thought she had probably exaggerated the whole thing. So I hoped for the best and let it slide.” “How wicked!” Frances said. “How contemptible!” The condemnation in her voice was all the deeper for its quietness. She sat before him cold, impersonal as a judge, her eyes fixed straight before her. A curious shiver went through the man. He got up to cover it, and resumed his pacing of the room. “I was away for over two years,” he went on, speaking as one impelled. “I never heard from her during that time. I almost forgot her. Then I came home. I found they had left Oxford. Did I tell you old Dermot Rotherby had held a professorship there, and Arthur was reading for the Bar? No one seemed to know where they were. Old Theodore, the Bishop, had been appointed to Burminster. I went to him, asked him for news. He said Dermot’s health had broken down, and they had taken a farm in the country. They had never been much to one another. He spoke very vaguely of them. It was Aunt Dorothea who let it out. She told me Nan had died mysteriously—that there had been a child—that they had changed their name in consequence—and then she got badly scared and begged me not to let the Bishop know she had told me, and not to dream of going near them as it was more than my life was worth. I must admit I didn’t feel drawn that way, since poor Nan was past help. So I decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and cleared out of the country again. I stayed away for some time, sometimes drifting back to London, but never for long. Then at last I got tired of wandering and came home. I went to Burminster, and met—you. You caught me then. You’ve held me ever since. And I could have won you—I could have won you—” He stopped abruptly. “What’s the good of talking? I’ve lost you now, haven’t I? You’ll never look at me again.” “Never,” Frances said. Her hands were clasped as she sat. There was no longer any agitation about her. She might have been a carven image, so still was she, so utterly aloof and removed from all emotion. He glanced at her once or twice as he walked, and finally came and stood before her. “I haven’t told you quite everything even now,” he said. “There’s one thing I’m almost afraid to tell you. Shall I go on—or shall I hold my peace?” “Go on!” she answered in the same dead-level voice.