ve I. All we have to do is to forget the years between." As
he spoke he felt that the thing could hardly have been better put.

"I have no wish to forget them."

He had made a great effort to control his temper, but he found her
unreasonable. His anger got the upper hand.

"It is one of two things that makes you refuse me. Either you can't
forgive me, and I daresay I don't deserve that you should, I am not
posing as a faultless character--or you have ceased to love me. Which is
it?"

"I have not ceased to love you," she replied. "Have I not just told you
so? But you would find yourself miserable in the--lop-sided kind of
marriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to make bricks
without straw."

"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me,
why was I sent for?" he stammered, white with anger. He struck the
table with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if I
was to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately planned
rebuff directly I set foot in the house!"

"Why were you _sent for_?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your own
accord. _Sent for!_ _Who_ sent for you?"

She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint.

"_Who_ sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?"

He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands.
Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, the
desire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated.
Others could be humiliated as well as himself.

"Read them," he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood by
the window with his back to her.

Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's,
Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped the
sweat from her forehead.

Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw them
creep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring,
their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they to
rend her again?

She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away.
They could not reach her. They could not touch her.

She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seen
him stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind his
back, looking out to the sea.

She went softly to him, and stood beside him.

"I am more grieved that I can say about these," she sa