, until he had
finished, with her head buried in his coat.

"It wasn't any good--I knew all the time that it could only end one
way.

"Everything betrayed me, every one left me. I thought every moment that
Rupert would tell me. Then, one night when I was hardly sane, I told a
man, Bunning--a queer odd creature who was the last kind of person to be
told. He, in a fit of mad self-sacrifice, told Rupert that _he'd_ killed
Carfax, and then of course it was all over.

"I suddenly yielded. It was as though God caught me and held me. I saw
Him, I heard Rim--yesterday--in the middle of the football. I know that
it was so. After that there could be only one thing--Obedience. I knew
that I must tell you. I have told you. I know, too, that I must go out
into the world, alone, and work out my duty . . . and then, oh! then, I
will come back."

When he had finished, on his shoulder he seemed to feel once more a hand
gently resting.

At last she raised her head, and clutching his hand as though she would
never let it go, spoke:--

"Olva, Olva, I don't understand. I don't think I believe in any God.
And, dear, see--it is all so natural. Thinking about what you had
done, thinking of it all alone, preyed on your nerves. Because Rupert
suspected you made it worse. You imagined things--everything. That is
all--Olva, really that is all."

"Margaret, don't make it harder for both of us. I must go. There is no
question. I don't suppose that any one can see any one else's spiritual
experiences--one must be alone in that. Margaret dear, if I stayed with
you now--if we married--the Pursuit would begin again. God would hold me
at last--and then one day you would find that I had gone away--I would
have been driven--there would be terror for both of us then."

She slipped on to her knees and caught his hands.

"This is all unreal--utterly unreal. But our love for each other, that
is the only thing that can matter for either of us. You have lived in
your thoughts these weeks, imagined things, but think of what you do
if you leave me. You are all I have--you have become my world--I can't
live, I can't live, Olva, without you."

"I must go. I must find what God is."

"But listen, dear. You come to me to confess something. You find that
what you have done matters nothing to me. You say that you love me more
than ever, and, in the same moment, that you are going to leave me. Is
it fair to me? You give no reason. You do not know where you a