“Evie is afraid,” she continued, “but I think it’s only fair to remember that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort.”

He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted his head nor spoke.

“She wanted me to tell you that while the—­the trial—­and other things—­are going on, she couldn’t be engaged to you—­I’m using her own expression, but she didn’t say that, when it was all over and you were free, she wouldn’t marry you.  I noticed that.”

He looked up quickly.

“I’m not sure that I catch your drift.”

“I mean that when it’s all over, and everything has ended as you hope it will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back.”

He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows

“Would you advise me to try?”

“It isn’t a matter I could give advice about.  I’m showing you what might be possible, but—­”

“No, no.  That sort of thing doesn’t work.  There was just a chance that Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn’t—­”

“Since she didn’t—­what?”

“She was quite right not to.  I admit that.  It’s in the order of things.  She followed her instinct rather than her heart—­I’m ready to believe that—­but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide.”

“Am I to understand that you’re not—­hurt?—­or disappointed?  Because in that case—­”

“I don’t know whether I am or not.  That’s frank.  I’m feeling so many things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another, or tell which is strongest.  I only know—­it’s become quite plain to me—­that a little creature like Evie couldn’t find a happy home in my life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its nest among crags.”

“Do you mean by that,” she asked, slowly, “that you’re—­definitely—­letting her go?”

“I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made me—­Isn’t it perfectly evident?  Can you fancy us tied together—­now?”

“I never could fancy it.  I haven’t concealed that from you at any time.  But since you loved her, and she loved you—­”

“That was true enough—­in its way.  In its way, it’s still true.  Evie still loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her.  The difference is that the man I was isn’t sitting here in front of you.”

“One changes with years, of course.  I didn’t suppose one could change in a few months, like that.”

“One changes with experience—­above all, with that kind of experience which people generally call—­suffering.  That’s the great Alchemist; and he often transmutes our silver into gold.  In my case, Evie was silver; but I’ve found there’s something else that stands for—­”

“So that,” she interposed, quickly, “you’re not sorry that Evie—?”

He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.