ncle Jim
was so wild that I had insulted you--"

"Don't talk of it," she cried. "I was put to shame before all those
grinning people. You ought to have said nothing--or something better than
that farmer boy said--"

"Well--perhaps, Leila; but the point is not _what_ I said in my desire to
help you and stop a man for the time insane. The point is that I did not
insult you; for an insult to be really that it must be intentional."

"Then you think I was unreasonably angry?"

"Yes, I do; and ever since then you have been coldly civil. I cannot
stand it. I shall never again ask you for what you cannot give, but if
you are to continue to resent what I said, then Grey Pine is no home for
me."

She stood up, the fan falling to the floor. "What do you want me to say,
John Penhallow?"

"Wait a little--just a word more. It was what poor Uncle Jim said that
hurt you. You could not turn on him; in your quite natural dismay or
disgust you turned on me, who meant only to help in a dreadful situation.
You know I am right"--his voice rose as he went on--"it is I, not you,
who am insulted. If you were a man, I should ask for an apology; as
you are the woman I have hopelessly loved for years, I will not ask you
to say you were wrong--I do not want you to say that. I want you to say
you are sorry you hurt me."

"I am sorry I hurt you, John. Will that do?"--her eyes were filling.

"Yes--but--"

"But what?"

"Oh, I want you to feel sorry."

"Don't say any more," she returned. "Let us be friends again." She put
out her hand, he took it, picked up her fan, laid it on the table, and
saying "Thank you!" opened the door towards which she moved and closed it
after her.

"And so"--she kept saying to herself--"we are to be no more than
friends." She sat still staring across the hall, trying to read. She was
fast losing control of the woman who was fenced in by social rule and
custom, trained to suppress emotion and to be the steady mistress of
insurgent passion. "My God," she murmured, "I should never have been
angry when he bought me, if I had not loved him--and now it is all
over--perhaps!"

Some readjustment there may have been, for when he reentered the hall an
hour later, she was reading. He said, as she looked up, "I mean to have a
long tramp to-morrow. I shall start early and walk to the mills and on to
the ore-beds. Then I shall return over the hills back of Westways, and
bring you, I hope, a few wood-pigeons. I may be a li