t really would have
been a very civil letter from him. "Now, dear Mr. Torrens, do stop being
artificial. Say you're sorry, and you won't do so any more."

"Please, I'm sorry and I won't do so any more.... But I did do it very
well, now didn't I? You must allow that."

"You did indeed, and Heaven knows how glad I should be to be able to be
taken in by it and believe every word the doctors say. But when one has
been hocus-pocussed about anything one ... one feels very strongly
about, one gets suspicious of everybody.... Oh yes--indeed, I think very
likely the doctors are right, and if Dr. Merridew had only said that you
couldn't see at all now, but that the sight was sure to come back, I
should have felt quite happy yesterday when...." She stopped,
hesitating, brought up short by suddenly suspecting that she was driving
home the fact of his blindness, instead of helping him to keep up heart
against it. But how could she get to her point without doing so? How
could Marcus Curtius saddle up for his terrible leap, and keep the words
of the Oracle a secret?

At any rate, he could not see her confusion at her own
_malapropos_--that was something! She recovered from it to find him
saying:--"But what I want to know is--_what_ happened yesterday? I mean,
how came you to know anything you did not know before? Was it anything
_I_ did? I thought I got through it so capitally." He spoke more
dejectedly than hitherto, palpably because his efforts at pretence of
vision had failed. The calamity itself was all but forgotten.

Gwen saw nothing ahead but confession. Well--it might be the best way to
the haven she wanted to steer for. "It was not what you _did_," said
she. "You made believe quite beautifully all the time we were sitting
there, talking talk. It was when I was just going. You remember when
mamma had gone away with 'Rene, and I put my foot in it over those
verses?"

"Yes, indeed I do. Only, you know, that wasn't because of the Watchman.
I never mixed him in--not with my affairs. A sort of Oriental
character!"

"Well--that was my mistake. You remember when, anyhow? Now, do you know,
all the time I was standing there talking about the Watchman, I was
holding out my hand to you to say good-night, and you never offered to
take it, and put your hands in your pockets? It must have gone on for
quite two minutes. And I was determined not to give a hint, and there
was no one else there...." Gwen thought she could understand the