s of men to whom such relationships are attractive by the very
reason of their illicit excitement. But we Strattons are honest people,
there is no secretive passion in our blood; this is no game for us;
never you risk the playing of it, little son, big son as you will be
when you read this story. Perhaps, but I hope indeed not, this may reach
you too late to be a warning, come to you in mid-situation. Go through
with it then, inheritor of mine, and keep as clean as you can, follow
the warped honor that is still left to you--and if you can, come out of
the tangle....

It is not only Justin haunts the memories of that furtive time, but
Rachel More. I see her still as she was then, a straight, white-dressed
girl with big brown eyes that regarded me now with perplexity, now with
a faint dismay. I still went over to see her, and my manner had changed.
I had nothing to say to her now and everything to hide. Everything
between us hung arrested, and nothing could occur to make an end.

I told Mary I must cease my visits to the Mores. I tried to make her
feel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel. "But it explains
away so much," she said. "If you stop going there--everyone will talk.
Everything will swing round--and point here."

"Rachel!" I protested.

"No," she said, overbearing me, "you must keep on going to Ridinghanger.
You must. You must." ...

For a long time I had said nothing to Mary of the burthen these
pretences were to me; it had seemed a monstrous ingratitude to find the
slightest flaw in the passionate love and intimacy she had given me. But
at last the divergence of our purposes became manifest to us both. A
time came when we perceived it clearly and discussed it openly. I have
still a vivid recollection of a golden October day when we had met at
the edge of the plantation that overlooks Bearshill. She had come
through the gardens into the pine-wood, and I had jumped the rusty
banked stream that runs down the Bearshill valley, and clambered the
barbed wire fence. I came up the steep bank and through a fringe of
furze to where she stood in the shade; I kissed her hand, and discovered
mine had been torn open by one of the thorns of the wire and was
dripping blood. "Mind my dress," she said, and we laughed as we kissed
with my arm held aloof.

We sat down side by side upon the warm pine needles that carpeted the
sand, and she made a mothering fuss about my petty wound, and bound it
in my handkerchi