At last she said, "Now I understand--now I understand." "I killed him in anger--it was quite fair. No one had any idea except Rupert, but everything helped to show him that it was I. When he saw that I loved Margaret he was very unhappy. He saw that we had some kind of understanding together and he thought that I had told you and that you sympathize with me. I am going down now to tell Margaret." "Poor, poor Olva." It was the first time that she had called him by his Christian name. She took his hand. "Both of us together--the same thing. I have paid, God knows I have paid, and soon, I hope, it will be over. But your life is before you." He looked out at the evening fields. "I'm going down now to tell Margaret. And tomorrow I shall set out. I will not come back to Margaret until I know that I am cleared--but I want you, while I am away, to think of me sometimes and to talk of me sometimes to Margaret. And one day, perhaps, I shall know that I may come back." She put her thin hands about his head and drew it down to her and kissed him. "There will never be a time when you are not in my mind," she said. "I love you as though you were my own son. I had hoped that you would be here often, but now I see that it is right for you to go. I know that Margaret will wait for you. Meanwhile an old woman loves you." He kissed her and left her. At the door through the dark room he heard her thin voice: "May God bless you and keep you." He went to perform his hardest task. 2 It was the harder in that for a little while he seemed to be left absolutely alone. The room was dark save for the leaping light of the fire in the deep stone fireplace, and as he saw Margaret standing there waiting for him, desperately courageous, he only knew that he loved her so badly that, for a little while, he could only stand there staring at her, twisting his hands together, speechless. "Well," at last she said. "Come and sit down and tell me all about it." But her voice trembled a little and her eyes were wide, frightened, begging him not to hurt her. He sat down near her, before the fire, and she instinctively, as though she knew that this was a very tremendous matter, stood away from him, her hands clasped together against her black dress. Suddenly now, before he spoke, he realized what it would mean to him if she could not forgive what he had done. He had imagined it once before--the slow withdrawal of her eyes, the gradual tightening of the lips, the little instinctive movement away from him. If he must go out into the world, having lost her, he thought that he could never endure, God or no God, the long dreary years in front of him.