He laughed with bitterness; her childishness struck him with renewed force; she could never understand his impossible situation; she would condemn him, and he deserved it! “Moral responsibility!” he repeated, with sudden fury, “what cant it is. I’d be willing to cast it all into Hades for one moment of liberty from these wretched shackles which ‘make cowards of us all!’ No living man can control his life where it touches another’s.” She shrank instinctively, with a sharp moral recoil, from his impassioned words, coloring deeply. Her hands trembled as she held the bridle, and even that slight motion made her horse swerve, eager to be off. Intuition, swift and unerring, interpreted his words and his sudden stress of feeling. “Pardon me,” she said simply, “I did not mean to set myself up as a judge. I suppose I’m very ignorant of such matters and--I would rather be so,” she added with gentle dignity. He looked at her deeply touched. “My God, Rose,” he murmured, “leave me; if you stay a moment longer I must speak, and you will never forgive me!” Her lip trembled like a child’s, but her clear eyes were full of a grave condemnation; yet she was deeply moved; he had never called her by her name before, and the sound of it upon his lips, the very way in which it was uttered voiced his heart; she could not close her ears to it, no matter how much she struggled with herself, and she did struggle, determined to hide her own pang of anguished regret. For a moment neither spoke, then she leaned slightly from her saddle and held out her hand. “Let us part friends,” she said in a voice of restraint. He did not take her hand; he groaned. “I cannot!” he exclaimed with renewed bitterness; “do not offer a sop to a starving man!” Her horse plunged and she grasped the bridle again with both hands. Her face changed so completely that it seemed to him a strange face. He could not read it but he believed that, in her heart, she condemned him, that he appeared to her in the guise of Mephistopheles himself. Yet, as she turned and looked back at him, there was an expression in her eyes at once inscrutable and beautiful; he could never be sure how far it confessed her heart. Had she loved him? It was impossible to know, and he stood mute watching her slight figure outlined against the sun as she galloped down the long quiet street, under an arcade of new green, wreathed here and there with the bloom of the tulip trees, narrowing at last to an arched vista of luminous sky above blue distant hills; its stillness and its new thick foliage shutting from view, at once of mind and eye, the city life which enfolded it, and was shut out by its gracious gift of leafage, which hid long rows of houses or clothed them with imaginary beauty.