patient or a child. "Tell me," she clasped her hands behind her back and
looked at him in marvellous simple candour, "do I really announce this
to you? Was there not in yourself anywhere--deep down--any knowledge of
it?"

"I did not guess--I did not dream!"

"And--now?" she asked.

A heavenly current drifted from her, the words rose and fell on it with
the most dazing suggestion in their soft hesitancy. It must have been
by an instinct of her art that her hand went up to the cross on Arnold's
breast and closed over it, so that he should see only her. The familiar
vision of her stood close, looking things intolerably new and different.
Again came out of it that sudden liberty, that unpremeditated rush and
shock in him. He paled with indignation, with the startled resentment
of a woman wooed and hostile. His face at last expressed something
definite, it was anger; he stepped back and caught at his hat. "I am
sorry," he said, "I am sorry. I thought you infinitely above and beyond
all that."

Hilda smiled and turned away. If he chose it was his opportunity to go,
but he stood regarding her, twirling his hat. She sat down, clasping her
knees, and looked at the floor. There was a square of sunlight on the
carpet, and motes were rising in it.

"Ah well, so did I," she said meditatively, without raising her eyes.
Then she leaned back in the chair and looked at him, in her level simple
way.

"It was a foolish theory," she said, "and--now--I can't understand it at
all. I am amazed to find that it even holds good with you."

It was so much in the tone of their usual discussions that Arnold was
conscious of a lively relief. The instinct of flight died down in him;
he looked at her with something like inquiry.

"It will always be to me curious," she went on, "that you could have
thought your part in me so limited, so poor. That is enough to say. I
find it hard to understand, anybody would, that you could take so much
good from me and not--so much more." She opened her lips again, but kept
back the words. "Yes," she added, "that is enough to say."

But for the colourless face and the tenseness about her lips it might
have been thought that she definitely abandoned what she had learned
she could not have. There was a note of acquiescence and regret in her
voice, of calm reason above all; and this sense reached him, induced him
to listen, as he generally listened, for anything she might find that
would explain the situation.