ur 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
flood-gate 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 leaped in 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 toward 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, indeed, that she was dealing
with a 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 beyo