your marriage?"

"I did not give it as a reason."

"What then did you give as your reason for refusing him?"

"I asked him how old he was."

"Jane! Standing there beside him in the chancel, where he had come
awaiting your answer?"

"Yes. It did seem awful when I came to think it over afterwards. But it
worked."

"I have no doubt it worked. What then?"

"He said he was twenty-seven. I said I was thirty, and looked
thirty-five, and felt forty. I also said he might be twenty-seven, but
he looked nineteen, and I was sure he often felt nine."

"Well?"

"Then I said that I could not marry a mere boy."

"And he acquiesced?"

"He seemed stunned at first. Then he said of course I could not marry
him if I considered him that. He said it was the first time he had
given a thought to himself in the matter. Then he said he bowed to my
decision, and he walked down the church and went out, and we have not
met since."

"Jane," said the doctor, "I wonder he did not see through it. You are
so unused to lying, that you cannot have lied, on the chancel step, to
the man you loved, with much conviction."

A dull red crept up beneath Jane's tan.

"Oh, Deryck, it was not entirely a lie. It was one of those dreadful
lies which are 'part a truth,' of which Tennyson says that they are 'a
harder matter to fight.'"

"'A lie which is all a lie
May be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth
Is a harder matter to fight,'"

quoted the doctor.

"Yes," said Jane. "And he could not fight this, just because it was
partly true. He is younger than I by three years, and still more by
temperament. It was partly for his delightful youthfulness that I
feared my maturity and staidness. It was part a truth, but oh, Deryck,
it was more a lie; and it was altogether a lie to call him--the man
whom I had felt complete master of me the evening before--'a mere boy.'
Also he could not fight it because it took him so utterly by surprise.
He had been all the time as completely without self-consciousness, as I
had been morbidly full of it. His whole thought had been of me. Mine
had been of him and--of myself."

"Jane," said the doctor, "of all that you have suffered since that
hour, you deserved every pang."

Jane bent her head. "I know," she said.

"You were false to yourself, and not true to your lover. You robbed and
defrauded both. Cannot you now see your mistake? To take it on the
lowest ground, Da