He was coming down now. He was only about twenty-five feet from the ground. There was no sound at all but the grating of his feet as he set them on the stones, and the movement, now and then, of a bird in the ivy. Then came a rustle, a gritty clatter, loud falling stones: his foot had slipped, and he had fallen. No--he was hanging by his hands above the great refectory arch, and his body swung heavily with the impetus of the checked fall. He was moving along now, slowly--hanging by his hands; now he grasped an ivy root--another--and pulled himself up till his knee was on the moulding of the arch. She would never have believed anyone who had told her that only two minutes had been lived between the moment of his stumble and the other moment when his foot touched the grass and he came towards her among the fallen wallflowers. She was a very nice girl and not at all forward, and I cannot understand or excuse her conduct. She made two steps towards him with her hands held out--caught him by the arms just above the elbow--shook him angrily, as one shakes a naughty child--looked him once in the eyes and buried her face in his neck--sobbing long, dry, breathless sobs. Even then he tried to be strong. "Don't!" he said tenderly, "don't worry. It's all right--I was a fool. Pull yourself together--there's someone coming." "I don't care," she said, for the touch of his cheek, pressed against her hair, told her all that she wanted to know. "Let them come, I don't care! Oh, how could you be so silly and horrid? Oh, thank God, thank God! Oh, how could you?" Of course, a really honourable young man would have got out of the situation somehow. He didn't. He accepted it, with his arms round her and his lips against the face where the tears now ran warm and salt. It was one of the immortal moments. The picture was charming, too--a picture to wring the heart of the onlooker with envy, or sympathy, according to his nature. But there was only one onlooker, a man of forty, or thereabouts, who paused for an instant under the great gate of the castle and took in the full charm and meaning of the scene. He turned away, and went back along the green path with hell in his heart. The other two were in Paradise. The Onlooker fell like the third in Eden--the serpent, in fact. Two miles away he stopped and lit a pipe. "It's got to be borne, I suppose," he said, "like all the rest of it. _She's_ happy enough. I ought to be glad. Anyway, I can't stop it." Perhaps he swore a little. If he did, the less precise and devotional may pardon him. He had loved the Girl since her early teens, and it was only yesterday's post that had brought him the appointment that one might marry on. The appointment had come through her father, for whom the Onlooker had fagged at Eton. He went back to London, hell burning briskly. Moral maxims and ethereal ideas notwithstanding, it was impossible for him to be glad that she was happy--like that. * * * * *