“Forgive me!” His eyes were filled with pleading. He did not know himself, did not recognise the old, happy-go-lucky Hugh Alston, who had accepted many a hard knock from Fate with a smile and a jest. “And so I am to be driven from this home, this refuge—by you?” she said bitterly. “Oh, have you no sense of manhood in you?” “I think I have. You shall not be driven away. I, of course, am the one to go. Through me you left Cornbridge, you shall not have to leave this house. I promise you, swear to you, that I shall not darken these doors again. Is that enough? Does that content you?” “Then I shall have at least something at last to thank you for,” she said coldly. And yet, though she spoke coldly, she looked at him and saw something in his face that made her lip tremble. Yet in no other way did she betray her feelings, and he, like the man he was, was of course blind. It was strange how long they had been left alone, uninterrupted. The strangeness of it did not occur to him, yet it did to her. She turned to the door. “Joan, wait,” he pleaded—“wait! One last word! One day I shall hope to explain to you, then perhaps you will find it in your heart to forgive. For the blunder that I made in Slotman’s office, for the further insult, if you look on it as such, I ask you to forgive me now. It was the act of a senseless fool, a mad fool, who had done wrong and tried to do right, and through his folly made matters worse. To-night perhaps I have sinned more than ever before in telling you that I love you. But if that is a sin and past all forgiveness, I glory in it. I take not one word of it back. I shall trouble you no more, and so”—he paused—“so I say good-bye.” “Good-bye!” He held out his hand to her, but she looked him full in the face. “Good-bye!” she said, and then turned quickly, and in a moment the door was closed between them. He did not see her hurry away, her hands pressed against her breast. He did not see the face, all womanly and sweet, and soft and tender now. He had only the memory of her brief farewell, the memory of her cold, steady eyes—nothing else beside. CHAPTER XIII THE GENERAL CONFESSES “My dear, my dear, life is short. I am an old man, and yet looking back it seems but yesterday since I was a boy beginning life. Climbing the hill, my dear, climbing the hill; and when the top was gained, when I stood there in my young manhood, I thought that the world belonged to me. And then the descent, so easy and so swift. The years seem long when one is climbing, but they are as weeks when the top is passed and the descent into the valley begins.” He paused. He passed his hand across his forehead. “I meant to speak of something else, of you, child, of your life, of love and happiness, and of those things that should be dear to all us humans.” “I know nothing of love, and of happiness but very, very little,” she said.