"I want to explain it all. Come into this cosy corner. Nobody will disturb us except when they bring tea.--Do you know that picture of Leader's? Isn't it exquisite!--Are you tired, Bertha? You look so, a little. I'm afraid you walked from the station, and it's such a hot day. But oh, the loveliness of the trees about here! Do you remember our first walk together? You were shy, stiff; didn't feel quite sure whether you liked me or not. And I thought you--just a little critical. But before we got back again, I think we had begun to understand each other. And I wonder whether you'll understand me now. It would be dreadful if I felt you disapproved of me. Of course if you do, I'd much rather you said so. You will--won't you?" She again fixed her eyes upon Bertha with the wide, appealing look. "Whether I say it or not," replied the other, "you'll see what I think. I never could help that." "That's what I love in you! And that's what I've been thinking of, all these weeks of misery--your perfect sincerity. I've asked myself whether it would be possible for you to find yourself in such a position as mine; and how you would act, how you would speak. You're my ideal of truth and rightness, Bertha; I've often enough told you that." Bertha moved uncomfortably, her eyes averted. "Suppose you just tell me what has happened," she added quietly. "Yes, I will. I hope you haven't been thinking it was some fault of _his_?" "I couldn't help thinking that." "Oh! Put that out of your mind at once. The fault is altogether mine. He has done nothing whatever--he is good and true, and all that a man should be. It's I who am behaving badly; so badly that I feel hot with shame now that I come to tell you. I have broken it off. I've said I couldn't marry him." Their eyes met for an instant. Bertha looked rather grave, but with her wonted kindliness of expression; Rosamund's brows were wrinkled in distress, and her lips trembled. "I've seen it coming since last Christmas," she continued, in a hurried, tremulous undertone. "You know he came down to Bath; that was our last meeting; and I felt that something was wrong. Ah, so hard to know oneself! I wanted to talk to you about it; but then I said to myself--what can Bertha do but tell me to know my own mind? And that's just what I couldn't come to,--to understand my own feelings. I was changing, I knew that. I dreaded to look into my own thoughts, from day to day. Above all, I dreaded to sit down and write to him. Oh, the hateful falsity of those letters--Yet what could I do, what could I do? I had no right to give such a blow, unless I felt that anything else was utterly, utterly impossible." "And at last you did feel it?"