"At least, it does no harm to believe the best," she returned in the same careless tone. Ahead of them, where the great oaks were massed darkly against the sky, he saw the steep road splotched into the surrounding blackness. Her soft breathing came to him from the obscurity at his side, and he felt his arm burn beneath the light pressure of her hand. For the first time in his lonely and isolated life he knew the quickened emotion, the fulness of experience, which came to him with the touch of the woman whom, he still told himself, he could never love. Not to love her had been so long for him a point of pride as well as of honour that even while the wonderful glow pervaded his thoughts, while his pulses drummed madly in his temples, he held himself doggedly to the illusion that the appeal she made would vanish with the morning. It was a delirium of the senses, he still reasoned, and knew even as the lie was spoken that the charm which drew him to her was, above all things, the spirit speaking through the flesh. "I fear I have been a great bother to you," said Maria, after a moment, "but you will probably solace yourself with the reflection that destiny would have prepared an equal nuisance had you gone along another road." "Perhaps," he answered, smiling; "but philosophy sometimes fails a body, doesn't it?" "It may be. I knew a man once who said he leaned upon two crutches, philosophy and religion. When one broke under him he threw his whole weight on the other--and lo! that gave way." "Then he went down, I suppose." "I never heard the end--but if it wasn't quite so dark, you would find me really covered with confusion. I have not only brought you a good mile out of your road, but I am now prepared to rob you of your light. Can you possibly find your way home in the dark?" As she looked up, the lantern shone in his face, and she saw that he wore a whimsical smile. "I have been in the dark all my life," he answered, "until to- night." "Until to-night?" "Until now--this very minute. For the first time for ten years I begin to see my road at this instant--to see where I have been walking all along." "And where did it lead you?" He laughed at the seriousness in her voice. "Through a muck-heap--in the steps of my own cattle. I am sunk over the neck in it already." Her tone caught the lightness of his and carried it off with gaiety. "But there is a way out. Have you found it?" "There is none. I've wallowed so long in the filth that it has covered me." "Surely it will rub off," she said. For a moment the lantern's flash rested upon his brow and eyes, relieving them against the obscurity which still enveloped his mouth.