Possibly her sensitive woman’s instinct like a mirror caught the gloom of the man’s mood. As she sat under the yews she opened her eyes wide and looked at him searchingly with that tender vigilance that was like the love-watch of an angel. No sunlight shone on Gabriel’s face, and his eyes were full of shadows. He glanced up at her suddenly, the restless, wistful look of one in pain. Nor would his eyes abide hers; they were furtive, even sullen. “Well, dear,” she said, again. He plucked at the grass, but did not smile as was his wont. “What is it, Gabriel?” There was no fear in her voice, only a deep, strong tone of tenderness that made the man more miserable still. “I have something to say to you,” was his retort. “Your wife—” “No, not of her.” “Then?” “It is of ourselves, and therefore the sadder.” He sprang up suddenly and began to move up and down before her, like one who would rouse his courage and deaden the consciousness of pain. Joan watched him, half bemused, her fingers opening and closing upon the rough woodwork of the seat. The mood was not new to her; she remembered with what an intonation he had spoken to her nigh a year ago beside the ruined altar on the hills. “Joan!” “Yes, Gabriel.” “I have been an utter fool. Oh, my God, how can I ask your pardon!” She sat and gazed at him as in a kind of stupor, the sunlight pouring through upon her face and making it wondrous white in the shadows. “What is it, Gabriel?” she said. “Like a blind fool I have been leading you to the edge of a cliff.” “I do not understand you, dear.” He stopped before her with a great gesture of despair and the morose look of a man denouncing his own crime. He spoke hurriedly, as though eager to end the confession, and as though each word he spoke would wound. “Understand that it was wrong of me to have come into your life again. I have been a dreamer, and have forgotten that the world is a mass of malice and of falsehood. Like a fool I have brought peril into your life. Now I am learning, for your sake, to fear the world.” She started up suddenly, and came towards him very white and piteous. He had never seen fear on her face before. “Gabriel!” “God help me, dear; if I had only realized—” “What is this horror?” “Men begin to speak evil of us.” “Evil of us?” “Yes.” “Impossible!” “Too possible, thanks to my madness.” “But we have done nothing!” “Nothing. It is the world’s charity, the business of brutes to conceive evil.” She stood motionless a moment and then started towards him with a sudden outburst of despair. “Tell me the worst, Gabriel.” “Thank God, the worst is not the worst in that sense.” “Ah!” “It is not too late; I am wise in time. It is we who must suffer, in our hearts, not in our names. Would to God I had not been such a fool as to make you love me.” “Ah! say not that.” “Can I forgive my manhood this?”