it's not that. Please don't ask me. I'm not engaged to be
married."

"You're married already?" He leant forward, bending over her, the
words clicking on his tongue.

"No--no--not even that."

"Then, what is it?"

She looked up to his eyes and let him read them. Then he stood
upright--slowly stood erect. His cheeks were patched with white,
there was a sweat on his forehead. He wiped it off with his hand.

"My God!" he whispered. "You, you? Great God, no!"

He turned, strode a few steps away from her, and stood looking down
into the grass. She could hear him muttering. For a little time she
waited, head bent, expectant of the sudden bursting of his revolt
against the truth. But it never came. His silence was more pregnant
with rebuke than speech could ever have been. She bore with it until
she thought she had given him full opportunity to rail against her
had he wished, then she walked slowly away, the unconquerable
sickness in her heart. She walked slowly; but she did not look back.
Would he follow her? Would he? Would he? She reached the gap in the
hedge. Then she turned her head. He was still standing where she had
left him, gazing down into the forest of grass stems.

CHAPTER III

This ended her life at Cailsham. How could she remain, how face the
reproach, no matter what effort she knew he would make to conceal
it, which at any moment she might find herself compelled to meet in
the eyes of Wilfrid Grierson? Cailsham was too small a place, the
little set in which her mother moved too narrow and confined to ever
hope of avoiding it. This must end her life at Cailsham.

With the readiness of this realization, then, why had she told? Cry
the woman a fool! She was a fool. Most good women are. But just as
the matter is vital in the mind of a man, so is it in the woman the
crucial test of honour. A thousand reasons--her happiness--the
happiness of content,--the sheltering of her name, the sheltering
of her position, all the cared-for security of her life to
follow--these can be placed in the scale, weighty arguments against
that little drachm of abstract honour, to plead for her silence. A
thousand times she could have been justified in saying nothing; but
had she done so she would have been a different woman. Fine things
must be done sometimes; mean things will be done always. There are
men and women to do them both.

That no passion was in the heart of her may have been an aid to her
honesty. With p