She consulted him about everything. Let him call when he would, she always received him. She surrounded him with the dainty feminine spider webs from which his life, almost monastic till now, had been quite free. She imported a knitting aunt, so that he should not take fright at long tete-a-tetes. The knitting aunt was deafish and blindish, and did not walk much in the rose garden. Betty knew a good deal about roses, and she taught the Reverend Christopher all she knew. She knew a little of the hearts of men, and she gently pushed him on the road to forgiveness from that half of the parish whom his first enthusiastic denunciations had offended. She rounded his angles. She turned a wayward ascetic into a fairly good parish priest. And he talked to her of ideals and honour and the service of God and the work of the world. And she listened, and her beauty spoke to him so softly that he did not know that he heard. One day after long silence she turned quickly and met his eyes. After that she ceased to spin webs, for she saw. Yet she was as blind as he, though she did not know it any more than he did. At last he saw, in his turn, and the flash of the illumination nearly blinded him. It was late evening: Betty was nailing up a trailing rose, and he was standing by the ladder holding the nails and the snippets of scarlet cloth. The ladder slipped, and he caught her in his arms. As soon as she had assured him that she was not hurt, he said good night and left her. Betty went indoors and cried. "What a pity!" she said. "Oh, what a pity! Now he'll be frightened, and it's all over. He'll never come again." But the next evening he came, and when they had walked through the rose garden and had come to the sun-dial he stopped and spoke-- "I've been thinking of nothing else since I saw you. When I caught you last night. Forgive me if I'm a fool--but when I held you--don't be angry--but it seemed to me that you loved me--" "Nothing of the sort," said Betty very angrily. "Then I must be mad," he said; "the way you caught my neck with your arm, and your face was against mine, and your hair crushed up against my ear. Oh, Betty, if you don't love me, what shall I do? For I can't live without you." Betty had won. "But--even if I had loved you--I'm married," she urged softly. "Yes--do you suppose I've forgotten that? But you remember what you said--about being really free, and not being bound to that beast. I see that you were right--right, right. It's the rest of the world that's wrong. Oh, my dear--I can't live without you. Couldn't you love me? Let's go away--right away together. No one will love you as I do. No one knows you as I do--how good and strong and brave and unselfish you are. Oh, try to love me a little!" Betty had leaned her elbows on the sun-dial, and her chin on her hands. "But you used to think ..." she began.