ifference from other men.

"I--fear--I hardly understand," he said. The words fell cramped and
singly, and his lip twitched. "It--it is impossible to think--" He
looked as if he dared not lift his head.

One would not say that Hilda hesitated, for there was no failing in the
wings of her high confidence, but she looked at him in a brave silence.
Her glance had tender investigation in it; she stood on the brink of her
words just long enough to ask whether they would hurt him. Seeing that
they would, she nevertheless plunged, but with infinite compassion and
consideration. She spoke like an agent of Fate, conscious and grieved.

"_I_ understand," she said simply. "Sometimes, you know, we are quicker.
And you in your cell, how should you find out? That is why I must tell
you, because, though I am a woman, you are a priest. Partly for that
reason I may speak, partly because I love you, Stephen Arnold, better
and more ardently than you can ever love me, or anybody, I think, except
perhaps your God. And I am tired of keeping silence."

She was so direct, so unimpassioned, that half his distress turned to
astonishment, and he faced her as if a calm and reasoned hand had
been laid upon the confusion in him. Meeting his gaze, she unbarred a
floodgate of happy tenderness in her eyes.

"Love!" he gasped in it, "I have nothing to do with that."

"Oh," she said, "you have everything to do with it."

Something thrilled him without asking his permission, assuring him that
he was a man--until then a placid theory with an unconscious basis. It
was therefore a blow to his saintship, or it would have been, but
he warded it off, flushed and trembling. It was as if he had been
ambuscaded. He had to hold himself from the ignominy of flight; he rose
to cut his way out, making an effort to strike with precision.

"Some perversity has seized you," he said. The muscles about his mouth
quivered, giving him a curious aspect. "You mean nothing of what you
say."

"Do you believe that?"

"I--I cannot think anything else. It is the only way I can--I can--make
excuse."

"Ah, don't excuse me!" she murmured, with an astonishing little gay
petulance.

"You cannot have thought--" in spite of himself he made a step towards
the door.

"Oh, I did think--I do think. And you must not go." She too stood up,
and stayed him. "Let us at least see clearly." There was a persuading
note in her voice, one would have thought that she was dealing with a