How was she to tell him that the cup of water never could have touched his lips?  And yet if this were the only falsehood of which he had to tell, she was bound to let him know that it was so.  That horrid story of Mrs Hurtle;—­she would listen to that if she could hear it.  She would be all ears for that.  But she could not admit that her lover had sinned in loving her.  ‘But, Roger,’ she said,—­’it would have been the same.’

’You may say so.  You may feel it.  You may know it.  I at any rate will not contradict you when you say that it must have been so.  But he didn’t feel it.  He didn’t know...