“Not mine,” she said.  “It is yours.  You cannot take me and yet call anything mine.”

“Ours, then, beloved.  What does it matter?  So he died long ago—­poor man!  And yet, it seems but a little while since some one told me—­but that was a mistake, of course.  He did not know.  How many years may it be, dear one?  I see you still wear mourning for him.”

“No—­that was but a fancy—­to-day.  He died—­he died more than two years ago.”

She bent her head.  It was but a poor attempt at truth, a miserable lying truth to deceive herself with, but it seemed better than to lie the whole truth outright, and say that her father—­Beatrice’s father—­had been dead but just a week.  The blood burned in her face.  Brave natures, good and bad alike, hate falsehood, not for its wickedness, perhaps, but for its cowardice.  She could do things as bad, far worse.  She could lay her hand upon the forehead of a sleeping man and inspire in him a deep, unchangeable belief in something utterly untrue; but now, as it was, she was ashamed and hid her face.

“It is strange,” he said, “how little men know of each other’s lives or deaths.  They told me he was alive last year.  But it has hurt you to speak of it.  Forgive me, dear, it was thoughtless of me.”

He tried to lift her head, but she held it obstinately down.

“Have I pained you, Beatrice?” he asked, forgetting to call her by the other name that was so new to him.

“No—­oh, no!” she exclaimed without looking up.

“What is it then?”

“Nothing—­it is nothing—­no, I will not look at you—­I am ashamed.”  That at least was true.

“Ashamed, dear heart!  Of what?”

He had seen her face in spite of herself.  Lie, or lose all, said a voice within.

“Ashamed of being glad that—­that I am free,” she stammered, struggling on the very verge of the precipice.

“You may be glad of that, and yet be very sorry he is dead,” the Wanderer said, stroking her hair.

It was true, and seemed quite simple.  She wondered that she had not thought of that.  Yet she felt that the man she loved, in all his nobility and honesty, was playing the tempter to her, though he could not know it.  Deeper and deeper she sank, yet ever more conscious that she was sinking.  Before him she felt no longer as loving woman to loving man—­she was beginning to feel as a guilty prisoner before his judge.

He thought to turn the subject to a lighter strain.  By chance he glanced at his own hand.

“Do you know this ring?” he asked, holding it before her, with a smile.

“Indeed, I know it,” she answered, trembling again.

“You gave it to me, love, do you remember?  And I gave you a likeness of myself, because you asked for it, though I would rather have given you something better.  Have you it still?”

She was silent.  Something was rising in her throat.  Then she choked it down.