t that letter come into the hands of the King's
friends, else was I dishonoured. It was an effective barrier between us.
So long as you possessed that letter you might pipe as you pleased, and
I must dance to the tune you set. And then this morning what you came to
tell me was that things were changed; that it was mine to call the tune.
Had I had the strength to be a villain, you had been mine now, and
your brother and Sir Rowland might have hanged on the rope of their own
weaving."

She looked at him in a startled, almost shamefaced manner. This was an
aspect of the case she had not considered.

"You realize it, I see," he said, and smiled wistfully. "Then perhaps
you realize why you found me so unwilling to do the thing you craved.
Having treated me ungenerously, you came to cast yourself upon my
generosity, asking me--though I scarcely think you understood--to beggar
myself of life itself with all it held for me. God knows I make no
pretence to virtue, and yet I think I had been something more than human
had I not refused you and the bargain you offered--a bargain that you
would never be called upon to fulfil if I did the thing you asked."

At last she interrupted him; she could bear it no longer.

"I had not thought of it!" she cried. It was a piteous wail that broke
from her. "I swear I had not thought of that. I was all distraught for
poor Richard's sake. Oh, Mr. Wilding," she turned to him, holding out a
hand; her eyes shone, filmed with moisture, "I shall have a kindness
for you.., all my days for your... generosity to-day." It was lamentably
weak, far from the hot expressions which she forced it to replace.

"Yes, I was generous," he admitted. "We will move on as far as the
cross-roads." Again they ambled gently forward. Up the slope from the
ford Diana and Jerry were slowly climbing; not another human being was
in sight ahead or behind them. "After you left me," he continued, "your
memory and your entreaties lingered with me. I gave the matter of our
position thought, and it seemed to me that all was monstrously ill-done.
I loved you, Ruth, I needed you, and you disdained me. My love was aster
of me. But 'neath your disdain it was transmuted oddly." He checked the
passion that was vibrating in his voice and resumed after a pause, in
the calm, slow tones, soft and musical, that were his own. "There is
scarce the need for so much recapitulation. When the power was mine
I bent you unfairly to my will; you did