She was leaning forward, stooping so that her face was completely hidden. With the silence that had fallen inside the church, the scene was quieter than it had been, and the stillness in the air intensified her difficulty of speech. She struggled to evolve from her confusion the phrase to express her impurity, but all the terms looked shameless and unutterable alike; and the travail continued until, faint with the tension of the pause and the violent beating of her heart, she said almost inaudibly: "I lived with him three years." CHAPTER X She heard him catch his breath, and then they sat motionless for a long while, just as they had been sitting when she spoke. Now that she had wrenched the fact out, the poignancy of her suffering subsided; even by degrees she realised that, after this, her leaving the town was inevitable, and her thoughts began to concern themselves vaguely with her future. In him consciousness could never waver from the sound of what she had said. She was impure. She had known passion and shame--she herself! The landscape lost its proportion as he stared; the clouds of the sky and the hue of the distance, everything had altered--she was impure. The laboured minutes passed; he turned and looked slowly down at her averted profile. The curve of cheek was colourless; her hands were still lying clasped on her knee. He watched her for a moment, striving to connect the woman with her words. Something seemed bearing on his brain, so that it did not feel quite near. It did not feel so alive, nor so much his own, as before the vileness of this thing was uttered. "I have never told you a falsehood," she murmured, "I didn't tell you any falsehood in London. Don't think me all deceit--every word of what I said that day was true." "I dare say," he answered dully; "I have not accused you." The change in his tone was pregnant with condemnation to her, and she wondered if he was believing her; but, indeed, he hardly recognised that she had said anything requiring belief. Her assurance appeared juvenile to him, incongruous. There was an air almost of unreality about their being seated here as they were, gazing at the blur of churchyard. Something never to be undone had happened and she was strange. The service had ended, and, trooping out, the Sunday-school pupils clattered past their feet, shiny and clamorous, and eyeing them with sidelong inquisition. She rose nervously, and, rousing himself, he went with her through the crowd of children as far as the gate. There their steps flagged to a standstill, and for a few seconds they remained looking down the lane in silence.