"Pure gold, rubbish!" he sneered, inwardly. Had he not just heard a girl say that Joel Eperson was the best man alive? What did a woman's opinion amount to, anyway? And how could Tilly expect him to be such a fool as to believe her when she had acted as she had that evening with another man? The memory of this fired him afresh and he suddenly shook her hand from his arm and with bowed head strode along. He was breathing now like a beast of burden hard driven by pain. "What is the matter?" Tilly asked, blandly, although she knew full well that she was responsible for his present mood, and, reaching out, she took his arm again. He did not lift it into place, and her hand slid down his wrist till his fingers were clasped by her pleading ones. "Don't be mad at me," she said, soothingly. "If you understood everything you would not be." Understood everything? Did she mean now that her engagement to Eperson would explain, justify all that had taken place? "I do understand," he said, aloud, his cheeks twitching, his lips tight, his eyes gleaming. He had stopped short and now stood fairly panting, facing her. "Oh, you don't--you don't!" she insisted. "Nobody knows, but myself and Joel, how he feels. I have tried to do right by him, and once I thought that in time I might feel otherwise, but it is impossible. I love him dearly in a certain way, but it is not as a woman ought to feel toward the one man in all the world for her--the one given by God Himself. Joel loves me in that way, and I am very, very unhappy about it. I see--I see--you thought to-night that he and I-- But never mind. I was only trying to get him to take a brighter view, for he is very, very dejected." "You mean to tell me, looking straight in my eyes," John cried--"you a truthful girl--you mean to tell me that you don't love him?" Tilly, with eyes full to their brink with sincerity, and in a voice that rang true to its maidenly depths, answered: "No, I do not love him as--as a wife ought to love her husband. I've tried, but I can't." The moonlight seemed filled with darting arrows of bliss made as visible as rockets against a black sky. John felt as if the vast earth were rocking his fears to sleep. He took her hand and drew it into its place on his arm. The ground seemed to fall away from each step he took as they moved forward. "I see, I see," he heard himself saying; "then it doesn't make any difference. Poor devil! _That's_ what ailed him, eh? No wonder! No wonder!"