I used to pretend I was going out, to ride or lounge with the Marquess or some other acquaintance, and then slip upstairs to the quiet old library, bury myself in a windowed recess cut off by curtains, and try to forget it all in a book. Fool-like I thought I could solve my problem so. The Hanyards was calling me and I dared not go. I should leave Margaret, and I could not leave her. Why, I asked myself a thousand times, was I so poor a cur compared with Donald? He had done what I had done, and he had seen his way at once and followed it. He would not live, having, in all innocence and with the most urgent of all reasons, killed his friend. Not that I felt that his solution was my solution. My duty was to leave Margaret and to go to Kate, to help her, to the best of my ability, to live down her sorrow, and to show by my life and conduct that I would pay the price. And here I was, hovering moth-like round the flame. Then again I would say that I would wait till the inevitable had happened, and Margaret was married to Tiverton. Anything to put it off, that was really all I was capable of. To me, in my recess, Margaret came one morning. "I thought you'd gone out, Oliver," she began. "No," said I. "I altered my mind, and thought I'd like reading better." "You puzzle me. Are you quite well?" "As fit as a fiddle," said I cheerily, and rose to give her my seat, for the recess would only hold one. "You're not to move, sir." She fetched a couple of cushions, flung them by the window, and curled up on them. I wished she wouldn't, for she made a glorious picture. "Now, sir, I am going to have it out with you," she said severely and smilingly. I smiled back, and pulled myself together. "I hope 'it' is not a very serious 'it,' madam," I replied. "It may be. Does your head ever trouble you?" "My head ever trouble me?" I gasped, taken aback. "Yes, your head, sir. When you fell down those stairs you received a very serious wound on the head. It gaped open so that I could have laid a finger in the hole. Are you sure it doesn't trouble you, Oliver? Blows on the head are dreadful things, you know." "Look at it," said I, popping my head down, and very glad of the chance. Her beautiful fingers parted my thick, short, bristly hair and found the spot. "There's nothing wrong with the skull, is there?" I asked. "No," very doubtfully. "It's healed splendidly." "Now, madam," said I, "talk to me in Italian!" It was the first time, by chance, that I had thought of it. For ten minutes she questioned and cross-questioned me in Italian on all sorts of subjects, and I came out of the ordeal pretty well--thanks to Signor Zandra. "Point one," said I in English. "The outside of my head is all right. Point two: are you satisfied with the inside?" For a full minute she gazed in silence at her feet, twisting them about swiftly and somewhat forgetfully. It was trying, almost merciless, for she was very beautiful.