even in that glance he could see that it was all that she could do to
force herself to speak; and by that look he understood for the first
time something of that which she was suffering.

"You know first," she said, "that I am promised to you. I hold that
promise as sacred as anything on earth can be."

Her voice shook a little. The boy bowed his head again. She went on:

"But there are some things," she said, "more sacred than anything on
earth--those things that come from heaven. Now, I wish to say this--and
then have done with it: that if such should be God's will, I would not
hold you for a day. We are Catholics, you and I.... Your father--"

Her voice broke; and she stopped; yet without leaving go of her hold
upon herself. Only she could not speak for a moment.

Then a great fury seized on the boy. It was one of those angers that for
a while poison the air and turn all things sour; yet without obscuring
the mind--an anger in which the angry one strikes first at that which he
loves most, because he loves it most, knowing, too, that the words he
speaks are false. For this, for the present, was the breaking-point in
the lad. He had suffered torments in his soul, ever since the hour in
which he had ridden into the gate of his own home after his talk in the
empty chapel; he had striven to put away from him that idea for which
the girl's words had broken an entrance into his heart. And now she
would give him no peace; she continued to press on him from without that
which already pained him within; so he turned on her.

"You wish to be rid of me!" he cried fiercely.

She looked at him with her lips parted, her eyes astonished, and her
face gone white.

"What did you say?" she said.

His conscience pierced him like a sword. Yet he set his teeth.

"You wish to be rid of me. You are urging me to leave you. You talk to
me of God's will and God's voice, and you have no pity on me at all. It
is an excuse--a blind."

He stood raging. The very fact that he knew every word to be false made
his energy the greater; for he could not have said it otherwise.

"You think that!" she whispered.

There, then, they stood, eyeing one another. A stranger, coming suddenly
upon them, would have said it was a lovers' tiff, and have laughed at
it. Yet it was a deeper matter than that.

Then there surged over the boy a wave of shame; and the truth prevailed.
His fair face went scarlet; and his eyes filled with tears. He dropped
o