When he had done speaking there was an absolute silence in the room. What he had spoken seemed to admit of no answer of any sort or kind from his listener. He had asked for nothing; he had pleaded neither for her sympathy nor her forgiveness, far less for any definite expression of the effect of his words upon her. He had not, seemingly, cared to know how they affected her. He had simply told his own story--that was all; it concerned no one but himself. She might pity him, she might even be amused at him, as he had said: anyhow, it made no difference to him; he had chosen to present a picture of his inner life to her as a doctor might have described some complicated disease to a chance acquaintance--it was a physiological study, if she cared to look upon it as such; if not, it did not matter. There was no possible answer that she could make to him; no form of words by which she could even acknowledge that she had heard him speak. She stood perfectly silent for the space of some two or three seconds; she scarcely breathed, her very heart seemed to have ceased to beat; it was as if she had been turned to stone. She knew not what she felt; it was neither pain, nor joy, nor regret; it was only a sort of dull apathy that oppressed her very being. Presently she put forth her hands, almost mechanically, and reached her cloak and hat from the chair behind her. The soft rustle of her dress upon the carpet struck his ear; he looked up with a start, like one waking out of a painful dream. "You are going!" he said, in his usual voice. "Yes; I am going." He stood up, facing her. "There is nothing more to be said, is there?" He said it not as though he asked her a question, but as one asserting a fact. "Nothing, I suppose," she answered, rather wearily, not looking at him as she spoke. "I shall not see you again, as I leave to-morrow morning by the early train. You will, at least, wish me good-bye?" "Good-bye, Maurice." "Good-bye, Vera; God bless you." She opened the door softly and went out. She went slowly away down the avenue, wrapping her cloak closely around her; the wind blew cold and chill, and she shivered a little as she walked. Presently she struck aside along a narrow pathway through the grass that led her homewards by a shorter cut. She had forgotten that Sir John was to wait for her at the lodge-gates. She had forgotten his very existence. For she _knew_. She had eaten of the tree of knowledge, and the scales had fallen for ever from her eyes. She knew that Maurice loved her--and, alas! for her--she knew also that she loved him. And between them a great gulf was fixed; deep, and wide, and impassable as the waters of Lethe. Out of the calm, unconscious lethargy of her maidenhood's untroubled dreams the soul of Vera had awakened at length to the realization of the strong, passionate woman's heart that was within her.