emy and mine--or how?'

'I know it. I can't tell you how.'

'Yes, I met her that night. Not by appointment, as you suppose. It was
by mere chance, as I came away from Bunce's house. I told her I was
leaving town next day, and I said good-bye to her. Again, not a
syllable was uttered that any one might not have heard.'

'Were you coming away from her, then, when I saw you?' Gilbert asked,
in a hard voice.

'No, not straight from her.'

As is wont to be the case with us when we have recourse to
equivocation, Egremont thought that he read in his rival's countenance
a scornful surmise of the truth. As is also wont to happen, this sense
of detection heated his blood, and for a moment he could have found
pleasure in flinging out an angry defiance. But as he looked Grail in
the face, the latter's eyes fell, and something, some slight movement
of feature, touching once more Walter's sense of compassion, shamed him
from unworthy utterance. He said, in a lower voice:

'If I _had_ yielded to temptation, if I had so far lost control of
myself as to speak a word to her which at once and for ever altered our
relations, do you think I should have tried to keep secret what had
happened? Do you think I could have conceived a desire which had _her_
suffering for its end? Are you so embittered that you can imagine of me
nothing better than that? You think I could have made _her_ my victim?'

Grail read his face. The emphasis of this speech was deliberate, could
not be misunderstood. For the first time Gilbert turned and moved a
little apart.

Walter had not the exclusive privilege of being an idealist. When at
length he spoke out of his deepest feeling, when he revealed, though
but indirectly, the meaning of his agitation, of his evasions, and
doubtful behaviour, he had found the way of convincing his hearer. It
was a new blow to Gilbert, but it put an end to his darkest fears and
to the misery of his misjudgment. In the silence that followed all the
details of the story passed before him with a new significance. The
greatness of his own love--a love which drew into its service every
noblest element of his nature, enabled him, once the obscuring mists
dispelled, to interpret his rival's mind with justice. Regarding
Egremont again, he could read aright the signs of suffering that were
on his face. It was with a strange bitter joy that he recovered his
faith in the man who had been so much to him. Yet his first words
seemed to exp