fate. He was conscious of no distinct desire to "make love" to her; if
he could have uttered the essence of his longing he would have said that
he wished her to remember that in a world coloured grey to her vision
by the sense of her mistake there was one vividly honest man. She might
certainly have remembered it, however, without his coming back to remind
her; and it is not to be denied that as he waited for the morrow he
longed immensely for the sound of her voice.

He waited the next day till his usual hour of calling--the late
afternoon; but he learned at the door that the mistress of the house was
not at home. The servant offered the information that she was walking
a little way in the forest. Longmore went through the garden and out
of the small door into the lane, and, after half an hour's vain
exploration, saw her coming toward him at the end of a green by-path. As
he appeared she stopped a moment, as if to turn aside; then recognising
him she slowly advanced and had presently taken the hand he held out.

"Nothing has happened," she said with her beautiful eyes on him. "You're
not ill?"

"Nothing except that when I got to Paris I found how fond I had grown of
Saint-Germain."

She neither smiled nor looked flattered; it seemed indeed to Longmore
that she took his reappearance with no pleasure. But he was uncertain,
for he immediately noted that in his absence the whole character of her
face had changed. It showed him something momentous had happened. It was
no longer self-contained melancholy that he read in her eyes, but grief
and agitation which had lately struggled with the passionate love of
peace ruling her before all things else, and forced her to know that
deep experience is never peaceful. She was pale and had evidently been
shedding tears. He felt his heart beat hard--he seemed now to touch
her secret. She continued to look at him with a clouded brow, as if his
return had surrounded her with complications too great to be disguised
by a colourless welcome. For some moments, as he turned and walked
beside her, neither spoke; then abruptly, "Tell me truly, Mr. Longmore,"
she said, "why you've come back." He inclined himself to her, almost
pulling up again, with an air that startled her into a certainty of what
she had feared. "Because I've learned the real answer to the question I
asked you the other day. You're not happy--you're too good to be happy
on the terms offered you. Madame de Mauves," he went