ait for an express. I can almost see the Honourable
Jane quitting yonder little railway station, seated in an empty
coal-truck. No! Don't start up and attempt to stride about among the
pine needles," continued the doctor, pulling Jane down beside him
again. "You will only trip over a fir cone and go headlong into the
valley. It is no use forestalling the inevitable fall."

"Oh, Dicky," sighed Jane, putting her hand through his arm; and leaning
her bandaged eyes against the rough tweed of his shoulder; "I don't
know what has come to you to-day. You are not kind to me. You have
harrowed my poor soul by repeating all Garth said last night; and,
thanks to that terribly good memory of yours, you have reproduced the
tones of his voice in every inflection. And then, instead of comforting
me, you leave me entirely in the wrong, and completely in the lurch."

"In the wrong--yes," said Deryck; "in the lurch--no. I did not say I
would do nothing to-day. I only said I could do nothing last night. You
cannot take up a wounded thing and turn it about and analyse it. When
we bade each other good-night, I told him I would think the matter over
and give him my opinion to-day. I will tell you what has happened to me
if you like. I have looked into the inmost recesses of a very rare and
beautiful nature, and I have seen what havoc a woman can work in the
life of the man who loves her. I can assure you, last night was no
pastime. I woke this morning feeling as if I had, metaphorically, been
beaten black and blue."

"Then what do you suppose _I_ feel?" inquired Jane pathetically.

"You still feel yourself in the right--partly," replied Deryck. "And so
long as you think you have a particle of justification and cling to it,
your case is hopeless. It will have to be: 'I confess. Can you
forgive?'"

"But I acted for the best," said Jane. "I thought of him before I
thought of myself. It would have been far easier to have accepted the
happiness of the moment, and chanced the future."

"That is not honest, Jeanette. You thought of yourself first. You dared
not face the possibility of the pain to you if his love cooled or his
admiration waned. When one comes to think of it, I believe every form
of human love--a mother's only excepted--is primarily selfish. The best
chance for Dalmain is that his helpless blindness may awaken the mother
love in you. Then self will go to the wall."

"Ah me!" sighed Jane. "I am lost and weary and perplexed in t