yton was fairly startled. The embarrassment of any truth is
apt to be in its eternal abruptness, which no deviousness of tact or
circumlocution of diplomacy has ever yet surmounted. Whatever had been
in her heart, or mind, she was unprepared for this directness. The bolt
had dropped from the sky; they were alone; there was nothing between the
stars and the earth but herself and this man and this truth; it could
not be overlooked, surmounted, or escaped from. A step or two more would
take her out of the garden into the moonlight, but always into this
awful frankness of blunt and outspoken nature. She hesitated, and turned
the corner into the olive shadows. It was, perhaps, more dangerous;
but less shameless, and less like truckling. And the appallingly direct
Clarence instantly followed.

"I know you will despise me, hate me; and, perhaps, worst of all,
disbelieve me; but I swear to you, now, that I have always loved
you,--yes, ALWAYS! When first I came here, it was not to see my old
playmate, but YOU, for I had kept the memory of you as I first saw
you when a boy, and you have always been my ideal. I have thought of,
dreamed of, worshiped, and lived for no other woman. Even when I found
Susy again, grown up here at your side; even when I thought that I
might, with your consent, marry her, it was that I might be with YOU
always; that I might be a part of YOUR home, your family, and have a
place with her in YOUR heart; for it was you I loved, and YOU only.
Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Peyton, it is the truth, the whole truth, I am
telling you. God help me!"

If she only COULD have laughed,--harshly, ironically, or even mercifully
and kindly! But it would not come. And she burst out:--

"I am not laughing. Good heavens, don't you see? It is ME you are making
ridiculous."

"YOU ridiculous?" he said in a momentarily choked, half-stupefied voice.
"You--a beautiful woman, my superior in everything, the mistress
of these lands where I am only steward--made ridiculous, not by my
presumption, but by my confession? Was the saint you just now admired in
Father Esteban's chapel ridiculous because of the peon clowns who were
kneeling before it?"

"Hush! This is wicked! Stop!"

She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voice
and manner. She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw it
between passion and impiety.

"Not until I have told you all, and I MUST before I leave you. I loved
you when I came he