s verandah!"

Rigden sprang to his feet.

"Good heavens!" he cried; and little dreamed that he was doubling his
enormity.

"So you were unaware of it, were you?"

"Quite!" he vowed naively.

"You had forgotten my existence, in fact? Your candour is too
charming!"

His candour had already come home to Rigden, and he bitterly deplored
it, but there was no retreat from the transparent truth. He therefore
braced himself to stand or fall by what he had said, but meanwhile to
defend it to the best of his ability.

"You don't know what an interview I had in yonder," he said, jerking a
hand towards the store. "And the worst of it is that I can never tell
you."

"Ah!"

"God forgive me for forgetting or neglecting you for a single instant!"
Rigden exclaimed. "I can only assure you that when I left you I didn't
mean to be gone five minutes. You will realise that what I eventually
undertook to do for this wretched man made all the difference. It did
put you out of my head for the moment; but you speak as though it were
going to put you out of my life for all time!"

"For the sake of a man you pretended never to have seen before,"
murmured Moya, deftly assuming what she burned to know.

"It was no pretence. I didn't recognise him."

"But you do now," pronounced Moya, as one stating a perceptible fact.

"Yes," said Rigden, "I recognise him--now."

There was a pause. Moya broke it softly, a suspicion of sympathy in her
voice.

"I am afraid he must have some hold over you."

"He has indeed," said Rigden bitterly; and next moment his heart was
leaping, as a flame leaps before the last.

She who loved him was back at his side, she who had flouted him was no
more. Her hot hands held both of his. Her quick breath beat upon his
face. It was now nearly dark in the verandah, but there was just light
enough for him to see the tears shining in her splendid eyes. Rigden was
infinitely touched and troubled, but not by this alone. It was her voice
that ran into his soul. She was imploring him to tell her all; there
must be no secrets between them; let him but tell her the worst and she
would stand by him, against all the world if need be, and no matter how
bad the worst might be. She was no child. There was nothing he could
not tell her, nothing she could not understand and forgive, except his
silence. Silence and secrecy were the one unpardonable sin in her eyes.
She would even help him to conceal that dreadful man, no matt