"Well?" he said at length, a faint ring of irritation in his voice, "Have you nothing to say to me now I have come?" Her lips quivered a little. "I don't think--there is anything to be said," she said. "I knew--I felt--it was too good to last." "It's over then, is it?" he said, the bitterness gaining the upper hand because of the misery at his heart. "The indiscretions of my youth have placed me finally beyond the pale. Is that it?" She gripped her hands together a little more tightly. "I think you have been--you are--rather cruel," she said, her voice very low. "If you had only--told me!" He made a gesture of exasperation. "My dear girl, for heaven's sake, look at the thing fairly if you can! How long have I known you well enough to let you into my secrets? How long have you been up to hearing them? I meant to tell you--as you know. I've been on the verge of it more than once. It wasn't cowardice that held me back. It was consideration for you." She glanced at him momentarily. "I see," she said in that small quivering voice of hers that told so little of the wild tumult within her. "Well?" he said harshly. "And that is my condemnation, is it? Henceforth I am to be thrust outside--a sinner beyond redemption. Is that it?" Her eyelids fluttered nervously, but she did not raise them again. She leaned instead towards the fire. Her shoulders were bent. She looked crushed, as if her vitality were gone, and yet so slender, so young, in her thin wrap. He clinched his hands with a sharp intake of the breath, and his frown deepened. "So you won't speak to me?" he said. "It's beyond words, is it? It's to be an insurmountable obstacle to happiness for the rest of our lives? We go back to the old damnable existence we've led for so long! Or perhaps--" his voice hardened--"perhaps you think we should be better apart? Perhaps you would prefer to leave me?" She flinched at that--flinched as if he had struck her--and then suddenly she lifted her white face to his, showing him such an anguish of suffering as he had not suspected. "Oh, Edward," she said, "why did this have to happen? We were so happy before." That pierced him--the utter desolation of her--the pain that was too deep for reproach. He bent to her, all the bitterness gone from his face. "My dear," he said in a voice that shook, "can't you see how I loathe myself--for hurting you--like this?" And then suddenly--so suddenly that neither knew exactly how it happened--they were linked together. She was clinging to him with a rush of piteous tears, and he was kneeling beside her, holding her fast pressed against his heart, murmuring over her brokenly, passionately, such words of tenderness as she had never heard from him before. When in the end she lifted her face to kiss him, it was wet with tears other than her own, and somehow that fact did more to ease her own distress than any consolation he could find to offer.