like _you_ not to have had the freedom, that even the lowest
seem to have----'

'Freedom?'

'To marry the woman they choose.'

'She didn't break off our relations because I couldn't marry her.'

'Why was it, then?'

'You're too young to discuss such a story.' He turned away.

'I'm not so young,' said the shaking voice, 'as she was when----'

'Very well, then, if you will have it!' His look was ill to meet, for
any one who loved him. 'The truth is, it didn't weigh upon her as it
seems to on you, that I wasn't able to marry her.'

'Why are you so sure of that?'

'Because she didn't so much as hint at it when she wrote that she meant
to break off the--the----'

'What made her write like that?'

'Why _will_ you go on talking of what's so long over and ended?'

'What reason did she give?'

'If your curiosity has so got the upper hand, _ask her_.'

Her eyes were upon him. In a whisper, 'You're afraid to tell me,' she
said.

He went over to the window, seeming to wait there for something that did
not come. He turned round at last.

'I still hoped, at _that_ time, to win my father over. She blamed me
because'--again he faced the window and looked blindly out--'if the
child had lived it wouldn't have been possible to get my father to--to
overlook it.'

'You--wanted--it _overlooked_?' the girl said faintly. 'I don't
underst----'

He came back to her on a wave of passion. 'Of course you don't
understand. If you did you wouldn't be the beautiful, tender, innocent
child you are.' He took her hand, and tried to draw her to him.

She withdrew her hand, and shrank from him with a movement, slight as it
was, so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time caught hold of
him.

'I am glad you didn't mean to desert her, Geoffrey. It wasn't your
fault, after all--only some misunderstanding that can be cleared up.'

'_Cleared up?_'

'Yes, cleared up.'

'You aren't thinking that this miserable old affair I'd as good as
forgotten----'

He did not see the horror-struck glance at the door, but he heard the
whisper--

'_Forgotten!_'

'No, no'--he caught himself up--'I don't mean exactly forgotten. But
you're torturing me so that I don't know what I'm saying.' He went
closer. 'You aren't going to let this old thing come between you and
me?'

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, and then took it away.

'I can't make or unmake the past,' she said steadily. 'But I'm glad, at
least, that you didn't me