"Because the coppice is so dark and lonely, and if—I say, if I should take it into my head to come and meet you sometimes, there would be no chance of my missing you." And so she looked at me and smiled, and, going back to her cooking, fell once more a-singing, the while I sat and watched her beneath my brows. Surely, surely no woman whose heart was full of deceit could sing so blithely and happily, or look at one with such sweet candor in her eyes? And yet the supper was a very ghost of a meal, for when I remembered the man who had watched and waited, the very food grew nauseous and seemed to choke me. "She's a Eve—a Eve!" rang a voice in my ear; "Eve tricked Adam, didn't she, and you ain't a better man nor Adam; she's a Eve—a Eve!" "Peter, you eat nothing." "Yes, indeed!" said I, staring unseeingly down at my plate, and striving to close my ears against the fiendish voice. "And you are very pale!" I shrugged my shoulders. "Peter—look at me." I looked up obediently. "Yes, you are frightfully pale—are you ill again—is it your head; Peter—what is it?" and, with a sudden, half-shy gesture, she stretched her hand to me across the table. And as I looked from the mute pity of her eyes to the mute pity of that would-be comforting hand, I had a great impulse to clasp it close in mine, to speak, and tell her all my base and unworthy suspicions, and, once more, to entreat her pardon and forgiveness. The words were upon my lips, but I checked them, madman that I was, and shook my head. "It is nothing," I answered, "unless it be that I have not yet recovered from Black George's fist; it is nothing!" And so the meal drew to an end, and though, feeling my thoughts base, I sat with my head on my hand and my eyes upon the cloth, yet I knew she watched me, and more than once I heard her sigh. A man who acts on impulse may sometimes be laughed at for his mistakes, but he will frequently attain to higher things, and be much better loved by his fellows than the colder, more calculating logician who rarely makes a blunder; and Simon Peter was a man of impulse. Supper being over and done, Charmian must needs take my coat, despite my protests, and fall to work upon its threadbare shabbiness, mending a great rent in the sleeve. And, watching her through the smoke of my pipe, noting the high mould of her features, the proud poise of her head, the slender elegance of her hands, I was struck sharply by her contrast to the rough, bare walls that were my home, and the toil-worn, unlovely garment beneath her fingers. As I looked, she seemed to be suddenly removed from me—far above and beyond my reach. "That is the fourth time, Peter." "What, Charmian?" "That is the fourth time you have sighed since you lighted your pipe, and it is out, and you never noticed it!" "Yes" said I, and laid the pipe upon the table and sighed again, before I could stop myself. Charmian raised her head, and looked at me with a laugh in her eyes.