in his mind as a link
in such a perfect sequence of evidence that doubt actually vanished
before he had lost sight of Chris and passed dumfounded upon his way.
Her lover's sudden death, her own disappearance, the child's advent at
Newtake, and the woman's subsequent return--these main incidents
connected a thousand others and explained what little mystery still
obscured the position. He pursued his road and marvelled as he went how
a tragedy so thinly veiled had thus escaped every eye. Within the story
that Chris had told, this other story might be intercalated without
convicting her of any spoken falsehood. Now he guessed at the reason why
Timothy's mother had refused to marry him on his last proposal; then,
thinking of the child, he knew Tim's father.

So he stood before the truth; and it filled his heart with some agony
and some light. Examining his love in this revelation, he discovered
strange things; and first, that it was love only that had opened his
eyes and enabled him to solve the secret at all. Nobody had made the
discovery but himself, and he, of all men the least likely to come at
any concern others desired to hide from him, had fathomed this great
fact, had won it from the heart of unconscious Chris. His love widened
and deepened into profound pity as he thought of all that her secret and
the preservation of it must have meant; and tears dimmed his eyes as he
pictured her life since her lover's passing.

To him the discovery hurt Chris so little that for a time he underrated
the effect of it upon other people. His affection rose clean above the
unhappy fact, and it was some time before he began to appreciate the
spectacle of Chris under the world's eye with the truth no longer
hidden. Then a sense of his own helplessness overmastered him; he walked
slowly, drew up at a gate and stood motionless, leaning over it. So
silent did he stand, and so long, that a stoat hopped across the road
within two yards of him.

He realised to the full that he was absolutely powerless. Chris alone
must disperse the rumours fastening on her brother if they were to be
dispersed. He knew that she would not suffer any great cloud of unjust
censure to rest upon Will, and he saw what a bitter problem must be
overwhelming her. Nobody could help her and he, who knew, was as
powerless as the rest. Then he asked himself if that last conviction was
true. He probed the secret places of his mind to find an idea; he prayed
for some cha