As she looked at him, she marvelled at her folly in imagining even for a moment that he had read any farther into her secret than the others. She remembered his first visit after her return; remembered how she had plied him with uncomfortable questions, and detected in his kindly eyes the terror of the man who, all his life, has tried to buy off fate by optimistic evasions. Fate had caught up with him now--Kate Clephane would have given the world if it had not been through her agency. Sterile pain--it appeared that she was to inflict it after all, and on the one being who really loved her, who would really have helped her had he known how! He moved nearer, and stood in front of her, forcing a thin smile. “You’ll think me as obtuse as the rest of them,” he said. She could not find anything to answer. Her tears had stopped, and she sat dry-eyed, counting the circles in the carpet. When she had reached the fifteenth she heard him speaking again in the same stiff concise tone. “I--I was unprepared, I confess.” “Yes. I ought to have known--” She stood up, and continued in a low colourless voice, as if the words were being dictated to her: “I meant to tell you; I really did; at least I suppose I did. But I’ve lived so long with the idea of the thing that I wasn’t surprised when you said you knew--knew everything. I thought you meant that you’d guessed. There were times when I thought everybody must have guessed--” “Oh, God forbid!” he ejaculated. She smiled faintly. “I don’t know that it much matters. Except that I want to keep it from Anne--that I must keep it from her now. I daresay it was wicked of me not to stop the marriage at any cost; but when I tried to, and saw her agony, I couldn’t. The only way would have been to tell her outright; and I couldn’t do that--I couldn’t! Coming back to her was like dying and going to heaven. It _was_ heaven to me here till he came. Then I tried.... I tried.... But how can I ever make you understand? For nearly twenty years no one had thought much of me--I hadn’t thought much of myself. I’d never really forgiven myself for leaving Anne. And then, when she sent for me, and I came, and we were so happy together, and she seemed so fond of me, I thought ... I thought perhaps after all it hadn’t made any difference. But as soon as the struggle began I saw I hadn’t any power--any hold over her. She told me so herself: she said I was a stranger to her. She said I’d given up any claim on her, any right to influence her, when I went away and left her years ago. And so she wouldn’t listen to me. That was my punishment: that I couldn’t stop her.” “Oh, Anne--Anne can look out for herself. What do I care for Anne?” he exclaimed harshly. “But you--you--you--and that man!” He dropped down into his armchair and hid his eyes again. She waited a minute or two; then she ventured: “Don’t mind so much.” He made no answer. At length he lifted his head, but without looking directly at her. “It was--long ago?”