've forgotten the facts, since Lady John tells me you
wouldn't remember my existence once a year, if the papers didn't----'

'Ah!' she interrupted, with a sorry little smile, 'you minded that!'

'I mind your giving false impressions,' he said with spirit. As she was
about to speak he advanced upon her. 'Do you deny'--he bent over her,
and told off those three words by striking one clenched fist into the
palm of the other hand--'do you deny that you returned my letters
unopened?'

'No,' she said.

'Do you deny that you refused to see me, and that when I persisted you
vanished?'

'I don't deny any of those things.'

'Why'--he stood up straight again, and his shoulders grew more square
with justification--'why I had no trace of you for years.'

'I suppose not.'

'Very well, then.' He walked away. 'What could I do?'

'Nothing. It was too late to do anything.'

'It wasn't too late! You knew, since you "read the papers," that my
father died that same year. There was no longer any barrier between us.'

'Oh, yes, there was a barrier.'

'Of your own making, then.'

'I had my guilty share in it, but the barrier'--her voice trembled on
the word--'the barrier was your invention.'

'The only barrier I knew of was no "invention." If you had ever known my
father----'

'Oh, the echoes! the echoes!' She lay back in the chair. 'How often you
used to say, if I "knew your father." But you said, too'--her voice
sank--'you called the greatest "barrier" by another name.'

'What name?'

So low that even he could hardly hear she answered, 'The child that was
to come.'

'That was before my father died,' Stonor returned hastily, 'while I
still hoped to get his consent.'

She nodded, and her eyes were set like wide doors for memory to enter
in.

'How the thought of that all-powerful personage used to terrorize me!
What chance had a little unborn child against "the last of the great
feudal lords," as you called him?'

'You _know_ the child would have stood between you and me.'

'I know the child did stand between you and me.'

He stared at her. With vague uneasiness he repeated, '_Did_ stand----'

She seemed not to hear. The tears were running down her rigid face.

'Happy mothers teach their children. Mine had to teach me----'

'You talk as if----'

'----teach me that a woman may do that for love's sake that shall kill
love.'

Neither spoke for some seconds. Fearing and putting from him fuller
comprehension, he