He hung his head.  The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.

“And you said—?”

“I said,” said Laurence simply, “that she was mine as much as I was hers, and that I’d go just then because she asked me to, but I was coming back.  I tried to see her again yesterday.  She wouldn’t see me.  She sent down word she wasn’t at home.  But I knew all along she was.  Mary Virginia, Padre!

“I tried again.  I haven’t got any pride where she’s concerned.  Why should I?  She’s—­she’s my soul, I think.  I can’t put it into words, because you can’t put feelings into words, but she’s the pith of life.  Then I wrote her.  Half a dozen times I wrote her.  I got down to the level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door.  I know she received them.  I repeated it again to-day.  It’s Mary Virginia at stake, and I can’t take chances, can I?  And this afternoon she sent this.

“Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of questions.  So far you have not reproached me; spare me that, too!  Don’t you understand?  I cannot marry you.  Accept the inevitable as I do.  Forgive me and forget me.  M.V.E.”

The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.

“Well?” said Laurence.  But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of paper.  I knew what I knew.  I knew what my mother had thought fit to reveal to me of the girl’s feelings:  Mary Virginia had been very sure.  I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard.  I was sure she was faithful, for I knew my girl.  And yet—­

There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope.  To find what I had found.  I handed the note back, in silence.

“Oh, why, why, why?” burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.  “For God’s sake, why?  Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre—­and her forehead like a saint’s—­No, she’s not false.  God never made such eyes as hers untruthful.  I believe in her.  I’ve got to believe in her.  I tell you, I belong to her, body and soul.”  He began to walk up and down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over them.  “I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn’t love me and found it out, and said so.  Women change, do they not?  But—­to take a man that loves her—­and tear his living soul to shreds and tatters—­

“If she’s a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe?  Why should she do it, Padre—­to me that love her?  Oh, my God, think of it:  to be betrayed by the best beloved!  No, I can’t think it.  This isn’t just any light girl:  this is Mary Virginia!”

I put my hand on his shoulder.  He is a head over me, and once again as broad, perhaps.  We two fell into step.  I did not attempt to counsel or console.

“Here I come like a whining kid, Padre,” said he, remorsefully, “piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens already.  Forgive me!”