love had been simple, it
had been direct, and wise in its consistent reserve. He had been
self-obliterating. His love desired only to make her happy: most lovers
desire that they themselves shall be made happy. Because of the crime
his father committed years ago--because of the shame of that hidden
crime--he had tried the more to make himself a good citizen, and had
formed the modest ambition of making one human being happy. Always
keeping this near him in past years, a supreme cheerfulness of heart had
welled up out of his early sufferings and his innate honesty. Hope had
beckoned him on from year to year, until it seemed at last that the time
had almost come when he might speak, might tell her all--his father's
crime and the manner of his father's death; of his own devoted purpose
in trying to expiate that crime by his own uprightness; and of his love
for her.

Now, all in a minute, his horizon was blackened. This adventurous
gallant, this squire of dames, had done in a day what he had worked,
step by step, to do through all these years. This skipping seafarer,
with his powder and lace, his cocked hat and gold-handled sword, had
whistled at the gates which he had guarded and by which he had prayed,
and all in a minute every defence had been thrown down, and Guida--his
own Guida--had welcomed the invader with shameless eagerness.

He crossed the islet slowly. It seemed to him--and for a moment it was
the only thing of which he was conscious--that the heels of his boots
shrieked in the shingle, and with every step he was raising an immense
weight. He paused behind the chapel. After a little the smother lifted
slowly from his brain.

"I'll believe in her still," he said aloud. "It's all his cursed tongue.
As a boy he could make every other boy do what he wanted because his
tongue knows how to twist words. She's been used to honest people; he's
talked a new language to her--tricks caught in his travels. But she
shall know the truth. She shall find out what sort of a man he is. I'll
make her see under his pretty foolings."

He turned, and leaned against the wall of the chapel. "Guida, Guida," he
said, speaking as if she were there before him, "you won't--you won't
go to him, and spoil your life, and mine too. Guida, ma couzaine, you'll
stay here, in the land of your birth. You'll make your home here--here
with me, ma chere couzaine. Ah, but then you shall be my wife in spite
of him, in spite of a thousand Philip d'Avra