still young, not ill-looking, with strange knowledge that might teach him how to ingratiate.... He spoke in a hollow voice. “I have been blind.” “Whatever you may have been,” said Aderhold with impatience, “you are blind in this hour. Look at me! Not for the sake of myself, but for the sake of truth, and to guard another from misapprehension, and to take a strange poison from your mind, I swear most solemnly that that maid and I were chance-met but now beneath this tree; that we spoke most generally, and far afield from what you madly imagine; and that, save for once before as chance and momentary a meeting, never have we been alone together! I swear that I think in that wise of no woman, and no woman of me!” “I would,” said Carthew heavily, “that I knew that you speak truth.” “I speak it,” said Aderhold. “And in turn I would that you might bring wisdom and better love into your counsel, and leave the maid alone!” Carthew looked at him. “Is there idle talk. Have you heard such tongue-clatter?” “Not I,” answered the other. “What I perceive you yourself have shown.” “Or she has said,” said Carthew. He moistened his lips. “Foolish maids will make much of slight matters!—If I have slipped a little—if Satan hath tempted me and the foul weakness of universal nature—so that I have chanced, perhaps, to give her a kiss or to tell her that she was fair—what hath it been to her hurt? Naught—no hurt at all. But to me.... Nay, I will recover myself. God help me! I will not put my soul in perdition. God help me!” He lifted his clasped hands, then let them drop to his saddle-bow. “I will begin by believing even where I believe not! What hurt to me if now and again you and Joan Heron speak in passing?—so be it that with your evil learning and your commerce who knows where, you put not the maid’s soul in peril ... so be it that you touch not her lips nor her hand—” He ceased to speak, his face working. “You are much to be pitied,” said Aderhold. “Have you finished?—for I would be going.” He drew his cloak about him, and made to pass the other. Carthew did not detain him; he only said, “But I shall watch you,” gathered up the roan’s reins, and himself rode starkly off in the direction of the village.