"I used to half fear you, dear," he said, still holding her hand through his arm. "I thought you were cold. I looked on you only as the woman who wrote books, as one who worked for praise and fame and success, as a woman hardened and schooled by a selfish world. That suspicion of selfishness, I believe, made _me_ selfish. No, no; you must listen, dear, for this is a confession. What I took for coldness in you challenged a certain coldness in me, and for weeks and weeks I misunderstood you and misjudged you. Now I know better. What has happened during the last week has shown me how wrong I was. And now I want you to forgive me, if you can, for all those old misunderstandings. Will you, Cordelia, dear?" "You believe in me? You trust me, fully?" she cried, thrilling through all her frail body, trembling with the fierceness of some newer, finer fire. For one silent minute he looked deeply into her eyes, and, seeing that great and glorious light in them, he responded: "I do, Cordelia! I do, my own!" And there was no shadow of doubt in his voice. "But I have done so much that is--that is not right!" she hesitated, almost imploringly, leaning over the grim old gun-carriage and burying her face shudderingly in her hands. "But now I love you because I know you could never deceive me, just as I would never deceive you. I can read it in your eyes, dear. In the past we have both done things which we ought not to have done, perhaps. But that was because we were both misguided, and both hemmed in by the wrong influences, wasting all the best of our lives, and the best of our hearts, on the things that were wrong." "It is too late!" she almost wailed. "No; no, indeed; we can go back and begin all over again, this time with a clean slate. I have been thinking these things over, trying, the last few days, to work them out by myself, and I believe I have learned more than one lesson in that time. Think how easily it can be done! We can slip around to that haven of the love-tossed, to the Little Church Around the Corner, and then we can hunt us out some little nook of our own in the big city, and there we can live our lives, and dream our dreams, and do our work, and be happy together! And how happy I shall be, working for you, dearest," he said, with the tremble of emotion in his voice. "No, no; not back to New York!" she pleaded. "Couldn't we go to England, to Oxford--your own Oxford, and live there, alone, away from them all?" "Yes, we could, if you thought best!" The idea of it was new to him. "John," she said, suddenly, and her voice seemed to lose its softness as she spoke. "John, I have something to tell you! I did not intend to tell you so soon, but now I must!" She felt that in that exalted moment she must burn every bridge behind her; she must give herself no further chance of defeating herself.