the way persons generally look at such matters, but she wasn't a common, ordinary person, and she didn't think the man she loved was--that is, I mean she thought you looked at it _exactly as she did_. She took you at your word. If what I say pains you, I'm sorry. I must be blunt to express what is in me, for I have long ago justified her. If she had been worldly minded, back there when she was glorying in the secret between you and her, she would have had worldly caution and forethought. You may get forgiveness even from her, Kenneth Galt, in time, but there can be nothing quite as unforgivable in the sight of God, it seems to me, as taking advantage of _just that sort of faith_.” The light of hope had died out of Galt's parchment-like face. He dropped his horrified gaze to the floor. “I see,” he groaned. “I am too late!” and sat as if stunned. “I was never up to her level. It was only her girlish fancy that told her I was.” “Oh, I don't know!” Mrs. Barry said, almost sympathetically. “Now that you feel as you do, her old trust might come back. There is one thing that has touched her, I'll tell you that much, for certain, and that has been your love for Lionel. One day I caught her shedding tears over it as she stood concealed by the window-curtain watching you play with him in the swing. If anything ever brings her back to you, it will be that one thing. He loves you, too; he is always talking of you, and, if I am any judge, she rather likes to hear it. It may be that--it may not; I never can be sure I am reading her right.” He rose. “I am going to find her now,” he said. “At any rate, she shall know how I feel. She may spurn me, but from this day on I shall devote my life to her interests and those of our child.” CHAPTER XXIV |INTO the wood, a wild, unbrageous tract of land lying back of the cottage, he strode, full of ponderous fears as to the outcome of his undertaking, and yet vaguely buoyed up by the natural beauty on all sides. Soon the town lay behind him; only the low hum of its traffic, the occasional clanging of a locomotive's bell, the whistle of an engine at a factory, the clatter of a dray followed him. The reverent, almost peaceful thought was borne in upon him that the meandering, little-used path he was pursuing had been traversed many times by Dora. In that secluded and picturesque spot she had breathed in the inspiration which had lifted her far above those by whom she had been misunderstood and traduced. Along that path she and his child, perchance, had plucked flowers through the years in which he had shunned them--denied them before the world, whose good opinion he had coveted to his moral undoing.