The strength of his renouncement was so rooted that he felt no personal fear, and for her, too, he no longer felt fear in his nearness. What he felt was a new pity--a pity suffocating and horrible. Whispers of discreet scandal enlightened him. Alice was in no danger of what she most shrank from--a public pillory; but she was among those of whom the world whispers, with a half-condoning smile and shrug. Gavan saw her riding one morning with a famous soldier, a Nietzschian type of strength, splendor, and high indifference. And now he understood all. He knew the man. He was one who would have stared light irony at Gavan’s chivalrous willingness to sacrifice his life to a woman; to such a charming triviality as an intrigue he would sacrifice just enough and no more. He knew the rules of the game and with him Alice was safe from any open pillory. People would never do more than whisper. A bitter daylight flooded for Gavan that sweet, false dawn, and once again the cruelty, the caprice at the heart of all things were revealed to him. He knew the flame of impotent remorse. He had tossed the miserable child to this fate, and though remorse, like all else, was meaningless, he loathed himself for his futile, empty magnanimity. She had seen his eyes upon her as she rode. She sent for him, and, alone with him, the glitter, the hardness, broke to dreadful despair. She confessed all at his knees. Hardness and glitter had been the shield of the racked, terror-stricken heart. The girl was a woman and knew the use of shields. “And Gavan, Gavan, worst of all,--far worst,--I don’t love him; I never loved him. It was simply--simply”--she could hardly speak--“that he frightened and flattered me. It was vanity--recklessness--I don’t know what it was.” After the confession, she waited, her face hidden, for his reproach or anger. Neither came. Instead, she felt, in the long silence, that something quiet enveloped her. She looked up to see his eyes far from her. “Gavan, can you forgive me?” she whispered. Once more he was looking at it all--all the cruel, the meaningless drama in which he had been enmeshed for a little while. Once more his thought had risen far above it, and the old peace, the old, dead peace, with no trembling of the hopes that meant only a deeper delusion, was regained. He knew how deep must be the reattained tranquillity, when, the woman he had loved at his feet, he felt no shrinking, no reproach, no desire, only an immense, an indifferent pity. “Forgive you, Alice? Poor, poor Alice. Perhaps you should forgive me; but it isn’t a question of that. Don’t cry; don’t cry,” he repeated mechanically, gently stroking her hair--hair whose profuse, wonderful gold he had once kissed with a lover’s awed delight. “You forgive me--you do forgive me, Gavan?” “It isn’t a question of forgiveness; but of course I forgive you, dear Alice.” “Gavan, tell me that you love me still. Can you love me? Oh, say that I haven’t lost that.”