She looked up quickly: there was a bitter word upon her tongue, but she refrained from uttering it. The struggle lasted for a moment only; then she went over to him, and laid her hand softly upon his arm. "Percival, are you always going to be so hard upon me?" she said. "I know you do not easily forgive, and I have wronged you. Can I do more than be sorry for my wrong-doing? I was wrong to object to your wishes. I will marry you when you like: you shall decide everything for me now!" His face had been gloomily averted, but he turned and looked at her as she said the last few words, and took both her hands in his. "I'm not quite such a brute as you think me, Elizabeth," he answered, with some emotion in his voice. "I don't want to make you do what you find painful." "That is nonsense," she said, more decidedly than he had heard her speak for many days. "The whole matter is very painful to both of us at present. The only alleviation----" "Well, what is the only alleviation? Why do you hesitate?" She lifted her serious, clear eyes to his face. "I hesitated," she said, "because I did not feel sure whether I had the right to speak of it as an alleviation. I meant--the only thing that makes life bearable at all is the trying to do right; and, when one has failed in doing it, to get back to the right path as soon as possible, leaving the sin and misery behind." He still held her hands, and he looked down at the slender wrists (where the blue veins showed so much more distinctly than they used to do) with something like a sigh. "If one failure grieves you in this way, Elizabeth, what would you do if you had chosen a path from which you could not turn back, although you knew that it was wrong? There are many men and women whose lives are based upon what you would call, I suppose, wrong-doing." There was little of his usual sneering emphasis in the words. His face had fallen into an expression of trouble and sadness which it did not often wear; but there was so much less hardness in its lines than there had been of late that Elizabeth felt that she might answer him freely and frankly. "I don't think there is any path of wrong-doing from which one might not turn back, Percival. And it seems to me that the worst misery one could go through would be the continuing in any such path; because the consciousness of wrong would spoil all the beauty of life and take the flavour out of every enjoyment. It would end, I think, by breaking ones heart altogether." "A true woman's view," said Percival, starting up and releasing her hands, "but not one that is practicable in the world of men. I suppose you think you know one man, at least, who would come up to your ideal in that respect?" "I know several; you amongst them," she replied. "I am sure you would not deliberately do a wicked, dishonourable action for the world."