ened, Donal?" she said. "Have you come to tell me that--?"

"No, not that--though that may come any moment now. It is something
else."

"What else?"

"I don't know how to begin," he said. "There has never been anything
like this before. But I must know from you that a--silly woman--has not
been telling me spiteful lies. She is the kind of woman who would say
anything it amused her to say."

"What was it she said?"

"I was dragged into a house by Clonmel. He said he had promised to drop
in to tea. There were a lot of people. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was there and
began to talk to me."

"Why did you think she might be telling you spiteful lies?"

"That is it," he broke out miserably impetuous. "Perhaps it may all seem
childish and unimportant to you. But you have always been perfect. You
were the one perfect being. I have never doubted you--"

"Do you doubt me now?"

"Perhaps no one but myself could realise that a sort of sore spot--yes,
a sore spot--was left in my mind for years because of a wretched thing
which happened when I was a child. _Did_ you deliberately take me back
to Scotland so suddenly that early morning? Was it a thing which could
have been helped?"

"I thought not, Donal. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I was right."

"Was it because you wanted to separate me from a child I was fond of?"

"Yes."

"And your idea was that because her mother was a flighty woman with bad
taste and the wrong surrounding her poor little girl would contaminate
me?"

"It was because her mother was a light woman and all her friends were
like her. And your affection for the child was not like a child's
affection."

"No, it wasn't," he said and he leaned forward with his forehead in his
hands.

"I wanted to put an end to it before it was too late. I saw nothing but
pain in it for you. It filled me with heart-broken fear to think of the
girl such a mother and such a life would make."

"She was such a little thing--" said Donal, "--such a tender mite of a
thing! She's such a little thing even now."

"Is she?" said Helen.

Now she knew he would not tell her. And she was right. Up to that
afternoon there had always been the chance that he would. Night after
night he had been on the brink of telling her of the dream. Only as the
beauty and wonder of it grew he had each day given himself another day,
and yet another and another. But he had always thought the hour would
come and he had been sure she would not grudge him a