The truth was bitter to the man, but the cup had to be emptied none the less. He experienced a species of revengeful fear when he realized how the girl’s name might be tossed upon the tongues of the numberless most Christian ladies of the neighborhood. Impotent, he had watched his dream-world rush into an abyss. He had come near exposing the one woman in the world to the cultured ribaldry of a provincial society and the gibes of her sister women. It was, therefore, a conviction with him, born half of despair, that Joan’s life and his must diverge, never to meet again. The man pitied himself most devoutly, for he was one of those sensitive beings who can make of misery a crown of thorns. Like a woman who had lost her lover, he hoarded his sorrow in his heart, treasuring it with a species of desperate exultation. He was even proud when he could not sleep and when his whole being sickened at the sight of food. There was a Promethean splendor in such torture, an immolation of the soul on the pyre of self-sacrifice. To tell Joan Gildersedge the truth, that was the task forced upon the man by his own conscience, a task embittered by her innocence of heart. He began to despise himself vindictively for having brought so passionate and impotent a theme into the girl’s life. His very idealism had been ill-judged egotism, a selfish thirst quenchless and perilous to others. He knew in his heart that he was of more worth to Joan Gildersedge than any animate creature upon earth. Yet it was fated that he should disclose to her eyes the baser chicaneries of life—to tell her, in truth, that he had come near compromising her honor! The memory of that day of confessions never surrendered its vividness to the touch of time. Gabriel had started early in the first flush of morning, bent on “nature studies,” as he would have had his neighbors believe. The earth was marvellously still, drowned in sunlight, an idyllic landscape such as would have glimmered from Da Vinci’s brain. The woods and hills seemed set in amber with a silver mist drawn like a gossamer veil over the green. Not a wind stirred. The sea was an uncut emerald; the sky a hollow sapphire touched with snow.