t his hand
was trembling--not much, yet quite visibly. It never used to do that,
and he looked at it with disgust. It seemed to him like an old man's
hand.

Then he began to study his face in the glass. No one would have
guessed that this was a man who had been praying all night. The whole
face showed those signs of fatigue that come after base pleasures,
after riotous waste of energy, after long hours of debauch. It seemed
to him that his gray hair was finer of texture than it ought to be,
hanging straight and thin, with no strength in it; that his eyes were
too dim, that the flesh underneath them had puffed out loosely, and
that his lower lip was drooping slackly--and he shuddered in disgust.
It seemed to him that his face changed and grew uglier as he looked at
it. It was becoming like an old man's face he had seen years ago.

In spite of the slight shakiness of his hand he managed to shave
himself without a cut, and he was just about to wash the soap away
when he heard a sound of lamentation on the lower floor. It was Norah
loudly bewailing herself. Mavis had gone down-stairs and published his
sentence of banishment.

Suppose that the girl betrayed their secret. Suppose that she was even
now telling his wife what had happened in the wood. Well, he must go
down to them and flatly deny whatever Norah said. But he tingled and
grew hot with a most miserable shame; his heart quailed at the mere
notion of the sickening, disgraceful character of such a scene--he,
the highly respected Mr. Dale, the good upright religious man, being
accused by a little servant girl and having to rebut her accusations
in the presence of his wife.

He dipped his head in the basin, and even when under the cold water
the tips of his ears seemed as if they were on fire. He must go
down-stairs the moment he had cooled his face; but he would go as some
wretched schoolboy goes to the headmaster's room when he guesses that
his unforgivable beastliness has been discovered, and that first a
thrashing and then expulsion are awaiting him.

Some of the lying words that he must utter suggested themselves. "Oh,
Norah, this is a poor return you are making for all my kindness.
Aren't you ashamed to stand there and tell such ungrateful
false-hoods. Ma lass, your cheek surprises me. I wonder you can look
me in the face."

But it would be Mavis, and not Norah, who would look him in the
face--and she would read the truth there. She would see it staring at