The river was very quiet, and the last glow of sunset red was slowly changing to twilight purple on the water; a sickle-shaped moon hung in the sky, and somewhere farther up the shore a night bird was uttering brief, plaintive cries. Agnes sat at the end of the boat, with her face a little turned away, as if she were listening to the sound. Arbuthnot wondered if she was, and thought again that she looked tired and a little pathetic. If he had known all her thoughts he would have felt the pathos in her eyes a thousand times more keenly. She had a white hyacinth in her hand, whose odor seemed to reach him more powerfully at each stroke of the oars, and at last she turned and spoke, looking down at the flower. "The saddest things that are left to one of a bitter experience," she said, in a low voice, "are the knowledge and distrust that come of it." "They are very natural results," he replied, briefly. "Oh, they are very hard!" she exclaimed. "They are very hard. They leave a stain on all one's life, and--and it can never be wiped away. Sometimes I think it is impossible to be generous--to be kind--to trust at all"-- Her voice broke; she put her hands up before her face, and he saw her tremble. "One may have been innocent," she said, "and have believed--and thought no evil--but after one has been so stained"-- He stopped rowing. "There is no stain," he said. "Don't call it one." "It must be one," she said, "when one sees evil, and is suspicious, and on the alert to discover wrong. But it brings suffering, as if it were a punishment. I have suffered." He paused a second and answered, looking backward over his shoulder. "So did I--for a moment," he said. "But it is over now. Don't think of me." "I must think of you," she said. "How could I help it?" She turned a little more toward him and leaned forward, the most exquisite appeal in her delicate face, the most exquisite pathos in her unsteady voice. "If I ask you to forgive me," she said, "you will only say that I was forgiven before I asked. I know that. I wish I could say something else. I wish--I wish I knew what to do." He looked up the river and down, and then suddenly at her. The set, miserable expression of his face startled her, and caused her to make an involuntary movement. "Don't do anything--don't say anything!" he said. "I can bear it better." And he bent himself to his oars and rowed furiously. She drew back, and turned her face aside. Abrupt as the words were, there was no rebuff in them; but there was something else which silenced her effectually. She was glad of the faint light, and her heart quickened, which last demonstration did not please her. She had been calm too long to enjoy any new feeling of excitement; she had liked the calmness, and had desired beyond all things that it should remain undisturbed. "There is one prayer I pray every morning," she had once said to Bertha, earnestly. "It is that the day may bring nothing to change the tone of my life."