She smiled drearily. "You must spare me further humiliation," she answered. He knew her meaning without more words. He must not speak to her of her mistake, nor hint of the possibility of her freedom. Yet it was this possibility that struggled dumbly within them for recognition, so that now their mood was one of storm, all the more intense from its repression. They were conscious each moment of the man who stood between them, no longer the familiar figure, but one evoked by their mutual guilt and sublimated by Cardington's prophetic words, strong to avenge himself upon his enemies and betrayers. Leigh, convinced that Emmet would claim his own, suffered already the anguish of renunciation, more poignant that the pressure of her unresisting lips was still felt warmly on his own. Before her house he stooped and kissed her again without fear of repulse, chastened and subdued. "Since it is to be good-bye," she said quietly. He stood where she left him, watching her figure lessening between the trees until it was swallowed up in the shadow of the house. The door opened, he saw the crimson flash of her cloak for a moment in the light from within, and then she was gone. The bishop, sitting beside the lamp with a book in his hand, glanced up as his daughter entered, with a keen inquiry in his deepset eyes. "I thought I just passed you with Mr. Leigh," he remarked, watching the effect of his words. Her unusual colour and the brilliancy of her eyes served to confirm his suspicions, though her manner was as studiedly indifferent as his own. It was with difficulty that she restrained the trembling of her fingers fumbling with the fastening of her cloak. "Yes," she answered. "Mr. Leigh met us at the Bradford after the President's speech, and the night was so beautiful that we walked home together." Looking at her attentively, he was struck by a new softness and radiance in her beauty, and by the fact that the Shaker cloak was singularly becoming. He thought of his sermon on personal adornment, and in spite of his anxiety, a deep amusement dawned in his eyes. "And went around Robin Hood's barn, by the way," he supplemented. "Is n't the longest way round the shortest way home?" she asked coolly. His smile had reassured her. Whatever he suspected, it was much less than the truth.