’Have you seen Nancy lately, and is she well?’ asked Alison, breaking the silence. ’I never see her,’ said Herries, shortly. ’Have you dropped all knowledge of her too?’ ’At first we wrote a little,’ said Alison, quietly, ’but I am no great hand at letters, sir, and so—and so we grew apart.’ ’That’s well,’ said Herries, abruptly. He chafed at this dull talk, walking at Alison’s side, but what to say, where to begin? He stole a look at her. ’Alison,’ he cried suddenly, ’your ear hurts. That little monster cut it with the lash; it bleeds.’ ’Does it?’ said Alison, faintly, putting up her hand. ’Wait—here!’ said Herries, eagerly. ’I have a soft silk kerchief.’ He noted, with a kind of anguish, the smudge of blood upon a little curl, and yet thought himself cool enough to wipe it away unmoved. But the touch, the contact, the terrible sweetness of approach were all too much. The pent-up tenderness of years would be denied no longer—his empty arms rebelled against their emptiness. ’Ally!’ he cried. ’Oh! Ally—oh, my soul!’ For, indeed, it did seem as though, after all these years of deathly trance, his soul had come back to him. *CHAPTER XLVII.* And now Herries, who had found an advocate, became his own accuser. ’That you can forgive me this long and cruel silence is impossible,’ said the man who had hitherto held himself so proudly blameless. ’Nay, there’s nothing to forgive in you,’ said the fond woman, who held him blameless still. ’Do you think I did not know you?’ she went on softly. ’I knew that you, being you, must have acted as you did. And I said to myself I would abide by your action, whatever it was, for I knew it would be just!’ ’If it was not my action that was sorely wrong,’ said Herries, in his new contrition, ’then it was something deeper. ’Twas my heart and nature that erred; to doubt yon was a cold-hearted, an abominable crime!’ But Alison only smiled. ’If you had erred,’ she said, ’it might have been easier for me, for then I might have found some comfort in thinking you unworthy. But no, I would not, for all the world, have had it so! I’d rather have borne the hardness of our parting than that!’ ’Was it—was it so very hard—to you?’ whispered Herries. ’Is it hard when the nest and the young ones are torn from the bird, do you think?’ said Alison. ’If that is hard, my suffering was like it; for all that I had went from me when I went from you!’ Herries sighed, and memory tormented him. He heard the plashing rain upon the pavement—the rain of that night of parting; he saw the white face that Alison turned upon him from the window of the sedan as the chairmen carried her away into the darkness. ’May God pardon me the hardness of my heart,’ he said, raising the hat from his head, ’for I’ll never forgive myself as long as I live.’