king things down. I might set something on fire." If he had had his
choice, he would rather not have had another interview with his host
until he was at liberty to confess all and say _peccavi_. Even "Gwen's
father's" announcement of himself did not warrant his breaking his
promise.

"There is no light," said the visitor, "except mine that I have brought
with me. I expected to find you in the dark--indeed, I was afraid I
might wake you out of your first sleep. I came because of Gwen--because
I felt I _must_ see you before I went to bed myself." He paused a
moment, Adrian remaining silent, still at a loss; then continued:--"This
has been very sudden, so sudden that it has quite ..."

Then Adrian broke out:--"Oh, how you must be blaming me! Oh, what a
_brute_ I've been!..."

"No--no, no--_no!_ Not that, not that _at all_! Not a word of blame for
anybody! None for you--none for Gwen. But it has been so--so sudden...."
Indeed, Gwen's father seems as though all the breath, morally speaking,
had been knocked out of his body by this escapade of his daughter's.
For, knowing from past experience the frequent tempestuous suddenness of
her impulses, and convinced that Adrian in his position neither could
nor would have shown definitely the aspirations of a lover, his image of
their interview made Gwen almost the first instigator in the affair.
"Why, you--you have hardly _seen_ her----" he says, referring only to
the shortness of their acquaintance, not to eyesight.

Adrian accepts the latter meaning without blaming him. "Yes," he says,
"but see her I _did_, though it was but a glimpse. I tell you this, Lord
Ancester--and it is no rhapsody; just bald truth--that if this day had
never come about.... I mean if it had come about otherwise; I might have
gone away this morning, for instance ... and if I had had to learn, as I
yet may, that this black cloud I live in was to be my life for good, and
all that image I saw for a moment of Gwen--Gwen in her glory in the
light of the sunset, for one moment--one moment!..." He breaks down over
it.

The Earl's voice is not in good form for encouragement, but he does his
best. "Come--come! It's not so bad as all that yet. See what Merridew
said. Couldn't say anything for certain for another three months.
Indeed he said it might be more, and yet you might have your sight back
again without a flaw in either eye. He really said so!"

"Well--he's a jolly good fellow. But what I mean is, what I