impetuous act of which he would have been ashamed later.
He had seemed to hear the voice as Rose slept her last sleep, under her
white veil, but later it was silent. It left him to himself, and
sometimes he was even persuaded that it joined with the voice of Rose,
whispering that siren word, "Reconsider."

Jack Doran had loved Rose. Perhaps on the other side of the valley he
had forgiven her, and wished above all other things that her memory
should remain bright. If Max reconsidered, it would all be easy. No one
would be surprised if he took long leave and went abroad. No one would
think it strange or suspicious if a girl "Cousin" should later appear on
the scene: a Miss Doran of whom no one had ever heard, who had been
educated abroad, and who, because she had lost her parents, was to take
up life in America. Or maybe it needn't even come to that, in case he
found the girl. She might be married. She might prefer to remain where
she was, with plenty of money from her distant relations, the Dorans, of
whose existence she would be informed for the first time. There would be
no difficulty in arranging this. The one real difficulty was that Max's
soul would be in prison. The bars would be of gold, and he would have in
his cell everything to make him and his friends think it a palace. But
it would be a prison cell, all the same, for ever and ever; and at night
when he and his soul were alone together, looking into each other's
eyes, he would know that from behind the door he had locked upon himself
there was no escape.

There were moments, and whole hours together, when he said with a kind
of sudden rage against the responsibility thrown on him, "I'll take
Rose's advice--the last words she ever spoke." But then, in some still
depth far under the turmoil of his tempted spirit, he knew that his
first decision was the only one possible for honour or even for
happiness. And the day after the funeral he made it irrevocable by
telling Edwin Reeves a wild story that had come to him in a strange
moment of something like exaltation. It had come as he stood bareheaded
by the grave where Rose had just been laid to sleep beside Jack Doran;
and in that moment a lie for their sakes seemed nobler than the truth
that would hurt them. More and more, as he thought of it on his way back
to the house which had once been "home," and as the possibilities
developed in his mind, with elaborations of the tale, this lie appealed
to his chivalry. Eve