t it seemed
to him that Mrs. Flynn knew all. But his second thought told him that
it was only an instinct on her part that there was something between
them--the beginning of love, maybe.

In another half-hour he was beside Rosalie's chair. "Perhaps you are
angry," she said, as he came towards her where she sat in the great
arm-chair. She did not give him time to answer, but hurried on. "I
wanted to tell you that I have heard you every night outside, and that I
have been glad, and sorry too--so sorry for us both."

"Rosalie! Rosalie" he said hoarsely, and dropped on a knee beside her
chair, and took her hand and kissed it. He did not dare do more.

"I wanted to say to you," she said, dropping a hand on his shoulder,
"that I do not blame you for anything--not for anything. Yet I want you
to be sorry too. I want you to feel as sorry for me as I feel sorry for
you."

"I am the worst man and you the best woman in the world."

She leaned over him with tears in her eyes. "Hush!" she said. "I want to
help you--Charles. You are wise. You know ten thousand things more than
I; but I know one thing you do not understand."

"You know and do whatever is good," he said brokenly.

"Oh, no, no, no! But I know one thing, because I have been taught, and
because it was born with me. Perhaps much was habit with me in the past,
but now I know that one thing is true. It is God."

She paused. "I have learned so much since--since then."

He looked up with a groan, and put a finger on her lips. "You are
feeling bitterly sorry for me," she said. "But you must let me
speak--that is all I ask. It is all love asks. I cannot bear that you
should not share my thoughts. That is the thing that has hurt--hurt so
all these months, these long hard months, when I could not see you, and
did not know why I could not. Don't shake so, please! Hear me to the
end, and we shall both be the better after. I felt it all so cruelly,
because I did not--and I do not--understand. I rebelled, but not against
you. I rebelled against myself, against what you called Fate. Fate
is one's self, what one brings on one's self. But I had faith in
you--always--always, even when I thought I hated you."

"Ah, hate me! Hate me! It is your loving that cuts me to the quick," he
said. "You have the magnanimity of God."

Her eyes leapt up. "'Of God'--you believe in God!" she said eagerly.
"God is God to you? He is the one thing that has come out of all this
to me." She reache