He expected she would cry or break down or do something dramatic that he could at any rate endure. But instead of that, she stared vacantly into the fast-deepening gloom of the coppice, stared infinitely, terribly, without movement or sound. Horror tore nakedly through her eyes like pain, though not a muscle of her face stirred from that fearful, statuesque immobility. Moments passed. Far over the intervening spaces came the faint chiming of the half-hour on the town-hall clock, and fainter still, but ominous-sounding, the swirl of the waves on the distant beach as the wind rose and freshened. He could not bear that silence and that stillness of hers. It seemed as though it would be eternal. And suddenly he saw that she was really suffering, excruciatingly; and he could not bear it, because he loved her. And then all his plans for torturing her, all his desires for vengeance, all his schemes to make her suffer as he had suffered, all the hate of her that he had manufactured in his heart--all was suddenly gone, like worthless dust scoured by the gale. He perceived that they were one in suffering as in guilt--fate's pathetic flotsam, aching to cling together even in the last despairing drift. He cried, agonisingly: "Clare! Clare! Oh, for God's sake, don't stare at me like that, Clare! Oh, my darling, my dear darling, I'm sorry--sorry--I'm dead with sorrow! Clare--Clare--be kind to me, Clare--kinder than I have been to you or to Helen! ..." VIII She said, quietly: "I must get back in time for my train." "No, no--not yet. Don't go. Don't leave me." "I must." "No--no----" "You know I must. Don't you?" He became calmer. It was as if she had willed him to become calmer, as if some of the calmness of her was passing over to him. "Clare," he said, eagerly, "Do you think I'm _bad_--am I--_rotten-souled_--because of what's happened? Am I _damned_, do you think?" She answered softly: "No. You're not. And you mustn't think you are. Don't I love you? Would I love you if you were rotten? Would you love me if _I_ was?" He replied, gritting his teeth: "I would love you if you were filth itself." "Ah, would you?" she answered, with wistful pathos in her voice. "But I'm not like that. I love you for what I know you are, for what I know you could be!" "Could be? Could have been! But Clare, Clare--who's to blame?" "So many things happen dreadfully in this world and nobody knows who's to blame." "But not this, Clare. _We're_ to blame." "We can be to blame without being--all that you said." "Can we? Can we? There's another thing. If Helen had--had lived--she would have had a baby in a few months' time...."