she asked.

All at once he saw that she never could quite understand. Her
stand-point would still, in the end, be the stand-point of a woman. He
saw that she would have forgiven him, even had he not loved her, if he
had not married Christine. For the first time he knew something, the
real something, of a woman's heart. He had never known it before,
because he had been so false himself. He might have been evil and had a
conscience too; then he would have been wise. But he had been evil,
and had had no conscience or moral mentor from the beginning; so he
had never known anything real in his life. He thought he had known
Christine, but now he saw her in a new light, through the eyes of
her sister from whose heart he had gathered a harvest of passion and
affection, and had burnt the stubble and seared the soil forever. Sophie
could never justify herself in the eyes of her husband, or in her own
eyes, because this man did not love her. Even as he stood before her
there, declaring himself to her as wilfully wicked in all that he had
said and done, she still longed passionately for the thing that was
denied her: not her lost truth back, but the love that would have
compensated for her suffering, and in some poor sense have justified
her in years to come. She did not put it into words, but the thought was
bluntly in her mind. She looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears,
which dropped down her cheek to the ground.

He was about to answer her question, when, all at once, her honest eyes
looked into his mournfully, and she said with an incredible pathos and
simplicity:

"I don't know how I am going to live on with Magon. I suppose I'll have
to keep pretending till I die!"

The bell in the church was ringing for vespers. It sounded peaceful
and quiet, as though no war, or rebellion, or misery and shame, were
anywhere within the radius of its travel.

Just where they stood there was a tall calvary. Behind it was some
shrubbery. Ferrol was going to answer her, when he saw, coming along the
road, the Cure in his robes, bearing the host. In front of him trotted
an acolyte, swinging the censer.

Ferrol quickly drew Sophie aside behind the bushes, where they should
not be seen; for he was no longer reckless. He wished to be careful for
the woman's sake.

The Curb did not turn his head to the right or left, but came along
chanting something slowly. The smell of the incense floated past them.
When the priest and the lad rea