kill him.  I never, if I could help it, crossed a certain boundary line that I had made for myself, between our side of the moor, and the side which belonged to the Fallodens.  I couldn’t be sure of myself if I had come upon him unawares.  Oh, of course, he would soon have got the better of me—­but there would have been a struggle—­I should have attacked him—­and I might have had a revolver.  So for your sake”—­he turned to look at her with his hollow blue eyes—­“I kept away.  Then, one evening, I quite forgot all about it.  I was thinking of the theme for the slow movement in my symphony, and I didn’t notice where I was going.  I walked on and on over the hill—­and at last I heard a man groaning—­and there was Sir Arthur by the stream.  I saw at once that he was dying.  There I sat, alone with him.  He asked me not to leave him.  He said something about Douglas, ‘Poor Douglas!’ And when the horrible thing came back—­the last time—­he just whispered, ‘Pray!’ and I said our Catholic prayers that our priest had said when my mother died.  Then Falloden came—­just in time—­and instead of wanting to kill him, I waited there, a little way off, and prayed hard for myself and him!  Queer, wasn’t it?  And afterwards—­you know—­I saw his mother.  Then the next day, I confessed to a dear old priest, who was very kind to me, and on the Sunday he gave me Communion.  He said God had been very gracious to me; and I saw what he meant.  That very week I had a hemorrhage, the first I ever had.”

Connie gave a sudden, startled cry.  He turned again to smile at her.

“Didn’t you know?  No, I believe no one knew, but Sorell and the doctors.  It was nothing.  It’s quite healed.  But the strange thing was how extraordinarily happy I felt that week.  I didn’t hate Falloden any more.  It was as though a sharp thorn had gone from one’s mind.  It didn’t last long of course, the queer ecstatic feeling.  There was always my hand—­and I got very low again.  But something lasted; and when Falloden said that extraordinary thing—­I don’t believe he meant to say it at all!—­suggesting we should settle together for the winter—­I knew that I must do it.  It was a kind of miracle—­one thing after another—­driving us.”

His voice dropped.  He remained gazing absently into the fire.

“Dear Otto”—­said Constance softly—­“you have forgiven him?”

He smiled.

“What does that matter?  Have you?”

His eager eyes searched her face.  She faltered under them.

“He doesn’t care whether I have or not.”

At that he laughed out.

“Doesn’t he?  I say, did you ask us both to come—­on purpose—­that afternoon?—­in the garden?”

She was silent.

“It was bold of you!” he said, in the same laughing tone.  “But it has answered.  Unless, of course, I bore him to death.  I talk a lot of nonsense—­I can’t help it—­and he bears it.  And he says hard, horrid things, sometimes—­and my blood boils—­and I bear it.  And I expect he wants to break off a hundred times a day—­and so do I. Yet here we stay.  And it’s you”—­he raised his head deliberately—­“it’s you who are really at the bottom of it.”