te-blue eyes were transfixing him.

"And that was all--absolutely all, Tom?"

"I don't lie--to you," he said briefly.

She gave him her hand with an impulsive return to the old comradeship.
"I believe you, Tom, in the face of all the--the unlikelinesses. But
please don't try me again. After what has happened--" she stopped in
deference to something in his eyes, half anger, half bewilderment, or a
most skilful simulation of both.

"Go on," he said; "tell me what has happened. I seem to have missed
something."

"No," she said, with sudden gravity. "I don't want to be your accuser or
your confessor; and if you should try to prevaricate, I should hate
you!"

"There is nothing for me to confess to you, Ardea," he said soberly,
still holding the hand she had given him. "You have known the worst of
me, always and all along, I think."

"Yes, I _have_ known," she replied, freeing the imprisoned hand and
turning from him. "And I have been sorry, sorry; not less for you than
for poor Nancy Bryerson. You know now what I thought--what I _had_ to
think--when I saw you with her this evening."

It was slowly beating its way into his brain. Little things, atoms of
suggestion, were separating themselves from the mass of things
disregarded to cluster thickly on this nucleus of revealment: the old
story of his companying with Nan on the mountain; his uncle's and
Japheth's accusation at the time; and now the old moonshiner's enmity,
Japheth's meaning look and distrustful silence, Nan's appearance with a
child bearing his own name, the glances askance in Hargis's store when
he was buying the little stock of necessaries for the poor outcast. It
was all plain enough. For reasons best known to herself, Nan had not
revealed the name of her betrayer, and all Gordonia, and all Paradise,
believed him to be the man. Even Ardea ...

She had moved aside out of the square of window light, and he followed
her.

"Tell me," he said thickly; "you heard this: you have believed it. Have
I been misjudging you?"

"Not more than I misjudged you, perhaps. But that is all over, now: I am
trusting you again, Tom. Only, as I said before, you mustn't try me too
hard."

"Let me understand," he went on, still in the same strained tone.
"Knowing this, or believing it, you could still find a place in your
heart for me--you could still forgive me, Ardea?"

"I could still be your friend; yes," she replied. "I believed--others
believed--that your punishme