The sensations I hadn’t had while making my confession began to come to me by degrees. Looking back over the chasm I had crossed, I was amazed to think I had had the nerve for it. I trembled reminiscently; the cold sweat broke out on my forehead. It was terrible to think that at that very minute she was in there weighing the evidence, against me and in my favor. Mechanically I relighted the cigar that had gone out. Against me and in my favor! I was not blind to the fact that in my favor there was something. I had gone down, but I had also struggled up again; and you can make an appeal for the man who has done that. She was long in coming back. I glanced at my watch, and it was nearly half past four. Her weighing of the evidence had taken her half an hour, and it was evidently not over yet. Well, juries were often slow in coming to a verdict; and doubtless she was balancing the extenuating circumstance that I had struggled up against the main fact that I had gone down. What she considered her ideal had during the past few weeks been gradually transferring itself from her mind to my own. She wouldn’t marry a man she couldn’t trust; she wouldn’t marry a man who hadn’t what she called spirit; she wouldn’t marry a milksop. But she had well-defined—and yet indefinable—conceptions as to how far in spirit a man should go, and of the difference between being a milksop and a man of honor. She might find it hard to admit that the pendulum of human impulse that swung far in one direction might swing equally far in the other; and therein would lie my danger. But I must soon know. It was ten minutes of five. The jury had been out more than three-quarters of an hour. A new quality was being transmuted into the atmosphere. It was as if the lightest, flimsiest veil had been flung across the sun. In the distant glinting of the sea, which had been silver, there came a tremulous shade of gold. The foxgloves bowed themselves like men at prayer. The robins betook themselves to the branches. From unseen depths of the scrub-oak there was an occasional luscious trill, as the time for the singing of birds wasn’t over yet. Round me there was silence. I might have been sitting at the door of an empty house. I listened intently for the sound of returning footsteps, but none came. At a quarter past five a chill about the heart began to strike me. I had been waiting more than an hour. Could it be possible that...?