“‘Right!’” broke in Joan with passion. “He has no right! And I will not have him couple my name here and couple it there! Oh, I would”—her eyes blazed at Carthew—“I would that so great a saint would leave this earth and go to heaven—if that, indeed, is where you belong!” Carthew sat his horse, dark as a thunder-cloud, and for all his iron frame and power of control, shaking like a leaf. “I believe neither of you,” he said thickly. He looked at Joan. “This is why you will not turn to me.” Her eyes flamed against him. “I never thought to hate a human creature as you have made me hate you!—And now I am going home.” She snatched up the staff with which she had been playing and turned with decision. He turned his horse also, but uncertainly, with his eyes yet upon Aderhold. Black wrath and jealousy were written in his face, and something else, a despairing struggle against total self-abandonment. “Stay a moment!” he cried to Joan. “Will you swear by God on high that you and this man have not been meeting, meeting in Hawthorn Forest?” Joan turned, stood still the moment asked. “Master Carthew, shall I tell you what I shall shortly do if you leave me not alone? I shall go with my father to the squire your brother, and to the minister, and to the three most zealous men in Hawthorn Parish, and I shall say to them, ‘This holy and zealous young man whom I have heard you, Master Clement, call Joseph, and young David, and what-not—this same Master Harry Carthew, who will speak and exhort and pray with sinners,—this same man has for months made a harmless girl’s life wretched to her, offering loathed love and insult—’” Her voice broke; she threw up her arms in a gesture of anger and unhappiness and fled away. Carthew sat like a graven image, watching her go. He spoke to himself, in a curious voice from the lips only. “If ever I should come to hate you as now I—” and again—“She will never dare—” The last flutter of her skirt vanished among the trees. Suddenly he said with violence, “She denied it not!” and turned upon Aderhold as though he would ride him down. The physician caught the bridle of the roan. “You are mad, Master Carthew! Look at me!”