rong to deceive me, and that in any case they had no right to
accept so great a sacrifice, even if it _was_ the one way out. I daresay
they said to each other that they couldn't put such a burden on an
innocent young man; it was their child's doing and they must bear the
whole ghastly ruin and shame of it themselves. They even went further.
What Jevons had done to Viola (they'd made up their minds about him) was
devil's work. What Viola had done to them was in some way the
expression--the very singular and unintelligible and bizarre
expression--of God's will. It was the cross they had to bear. God, I
suppose, knew the kind of cross that would hurt them most.

A great deal of this he did say to me. He said it very simply, without
phrases.

Nothing, he said, would have pleased them better than that I should marry
Viola. But--he didn't think that he could let me do it. If I had only
come to him three weeks ago--

He hadn't been able--naturally--to talk about it last night. He had hoped
he wouldn't have to say anything about it at all, but I had forced him.

It couldn't have been worse if I'd seen him about to put a knife into his
breast. I tried to stop him, but he would do it, he _would_ put the knife
in.

"We don't know," he said, "what may have occurred at Bruges."

"Nothing occurred," I said, "nothing that you need mind."

He said, "That's what the child tells me."

And I, "Surely, sir, you believe her word?"

Of course--of course he believed her word. Viola, he said, might keep the
truth from them if (he smiled in spite of himself) if she thought it
would not be good for them to know it. But she had never told them an
untruth. Never. She was--essentially--truthful.

"Only," he said, "we don't know what she may have been driven to. She may
have been trying to shield that man Jevons."

I said I was convinced that, technically, Jevons was innocent. It looked
as if he had been criminally reckless and inconsiderate; but he seemed to
have honestly thought that there was no harm in Viola's joining him in
Bruges.

But the Canon didn't want to know what Jevons had thought, honestly or
otherwise. Or what Viola had thought. "It's what they've done," he said.
"You can't get over it."

I said what they'd done didn't amount to more than, looking at the
Belfry. I could very easily get over that.

He said that I was an Israelite indeed. But the world wasn't all
Belfries, and we must look at it like men of the world.