Still I am silent. Though I stand in the free clear air of heaven, I
could not feel more choked and gasping were I in some close and stifling
dungeon, hundreds of feet underground. I think that the brook must have
got into my brain, there is such a noise of bubbling and brawling in it.
Barbara, Roger, Algy, a hundred confused ideas of pain and dismay jostle
each other in my head.

"Why do you look at me so?" he says, hoarsely. "What have I done? For
God's sake, do not think that I blame you! I never have been so sorry
for any one in my life as I have been for you--as I was for you from the
first moment I saw you! I can see you now, as I first caught sight of
you--weariness and depression in every line of your face--"

I can bear no more. At his last words, a pain like a knife, sharp to
agony, runs through me. It is the grain of truth in his wicked, lying
words that gives them their sting. I _was_ weary; I _was_ depressed; I
_was_ bored. I fling out my arms with a sudden gesture of despair, and
then, throwing myself down on the ground, bury my face in a great moss
cushion, and put my fingers in my ears.

"O my God!" I cry, writhing, "what _shall_ I do?--how _can_ I bear it?"

After a moment or two I sit up.

"How _shameful_ of you!" I cry, bursting into a passion of tears. "What
sort of women can you have lived among? what a hateful mind you must
have! And I thought that you were a nice fellow, and that we were all so
comfortable together!"

He has drawn back a pace or two, and now stands leaning against one of
the bent and writhen trunks of the old trees. He is still as pale as the
dead, and looks all the paler for the burning darkness of his eyes.

"Is it possible," he says, in a low tone of but half-suppressed fury,
"that you are going to _pretend_ to be surprised?"

"_Pretend!_" cry I, vehemently; "there is no pretense about it! I never
was so horribly, miserably surprised in all my life!"

And then, thinking of Barbara, I fall to weeping again, in utter
bitterness and discomfiture.

"It is _impossible_!" he says, roughly. "Whatever else you are, you are
no fool; and a woman would have had to be blinder than any mole not to
see whither I--yes, and _you_, too--have been tending! If you meant to
be _surprised_ all along when it came to this, why did you make yourself
common talk for the neighborhood with me? Why did you press me, with
such unconventional eagerness to visit you? Why did you reproach me if