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She rose from where she was sitting against the bank, and picked up her sunshade.

“I am afraid that it is all wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I have been too sudden—I had no right to listen to you—to tell you—but you came upon me before I was aware of it, and—oh, I told you just how I felt. As I kept telling you, I felt that I was telling myself the truth for the first time. But—well, I was free—that is to say, I should have been free if he had not said that he trusted in me. That was his trick... Oh, why did you come here to-day? Why—why—why? Could you not have waited until I had carried out my resolution to go to him and tell him that I would not be bound by any trick of his? You had no right to come as you did. I feel that I have been wrong—horribly wrong. I should have gone to him first.”

“Yes; but I came—I came, and you cannot take back a word that you spoke—that’s one good thing anyway,” said he in the voice of a man that no woman’s treble can oppose, unless it becomes shrill, and there is a craning of the neck as it is uttered.

“You will say that women have no sense of honour—I have heard men say that,” she continued, and there was indignation in her voice. “No sense of honour! Perhaps we have not; but I meant—yes, it was my sense of honour that made me make up my mind to go to him and give him to understand that I meant to be free—free, not merely in name, but really free—free so that he should have no right to say that he trusted me. He said that he trusted me—those were his words; they sounded generous at the moment, but then I perceived that—that——” Her utterance became more deliberate; then it seemed to occur to her that there was something wanting on the part of her auditor: there was a puzzled expression on his face that puzzled her at first interfering with her fluency; then all at once she seemed to recollect that the extent of her knowledge of the subject on which she was speaking was a good deal more than his could possibly be. How could he be expected to know what had been kept a secret from her father and mother—from all the world?

“You know nothing,” she said after a long pause. “I shall have to tell you everything. Perhaps you will feel that I have acted badly—disgracefully—without a sense of honour. I dare say I have—yes, I feel that I have behaved badly; but it was your fault. You came too soon. I tell you that indeed I had thought it all out, and made up my mind that I should be free from all blame.”

“Tell me all that is on your mind, my dearest,” said he. “You have already told me all that is on your heart.”

“It doesn’t matter what he may think—now, does it?” she cried.

“Nothing matters so long as we love each other,” he responded glibly and gladly.

“And it really isn’t much after all that I have to tell,” she said. “How I ever came to agree to his proposal, I cannot explain.”

“Whose proposal?”

“Whose?—Whose? Oh, you do not know even so much. Listen. Nearly a year ago I fancied that I was in love with Ernest Clifton. At any rate he told me that he was in love with me and I admired him so much for the way he had worked himself up from the humblest of positions—I suppose that’s the best explanation of the matter—I agreed to marry him, and he also persuaded me to keep my engagement secret from all the world: he knew that my father would not sanction it until at least he had a seat in Parliament. Well, it was kept a secret; but I gradually so came to see that I was acting wrongly—the whole business so weighed upon me that I was conscious of my whole character—my whole nature changing, and I insisted on his releasing me from my engagement.”

“And he did so? It would not matter to me whether he did so or not; but I suppose he was wise enough to do so.”

“After some time, and a letter or two, he said that he released me; and then—this was what made me angry—he said, ‘Between you and me there is no need for the formality of an engagement. I have implicit faith in you and I know that you have implicit faith in me. We can trust each other.’ Now don’t you see how despicably clever he was? Don’t you see that while he released me with one hand he was holding me to him with the other? Don’t you see that in listening to you here to-day—in admitting to you that it is you and none other whom I love, I have acted dishonestly—shamefully, if you insist on it.”

“I don’t insist on it. I am glad that I came here when I did, taking you by surprise. I see clearly that if I had not taken you by surprise I might never have had a chance of hearing the truth from you—the truth which has made a new man of me.”

“I don’t agree with you. I feel that when he trusted me—cannot you see that he made it a question of honour with me? Haven’t you heard of a soldier’s parole? I have broken my parole. That’s what I feel.”

“My dearest girl, do you fancy that parole can be a one-sided agreement? Is your sense of honour to be entrapped by sophistry? Talk of parole—a man to whom you consider yourself bound by a promise releases you from the consequence of this promise, and then tells you that though you promised not to run away, and though he releases you from that promise he trusts in your honour not to run away. What sophistry is this? It might do well enough for a political juggler, but it is not for such people as you or I. You didn’t say to him, did you?—‘I agree to be bound to you by the faith which we have in each other.’”

“He took care to give me no chance of replying to him one way or another.”

“Then cannot you perceive that he had no claim on you?”

She was silent. The fact was that she did not perceive it. But undoubtedly the way he proved the point was agreeable to her. Of course it is quite possible for a man to prove a point to a woman’s satisfaction and yet to leave her unsatisfied as to whether or not his contention is correct. Pierce Winwood had proved to this young woman that she had been well within her rights in accepting him as her lover, and yet she had an uneasy feeling that she had done the other man a wrong. An old rhyme went jingling through her brain, with all the irritating force of a milk cart hurrying for a train—something about the advisability of being off with the old love before being on with the new.

But that was just what she had done: she had been strictly conscientious. She had written to Ernest Clifton asking to be released from the promise which she had made to him and he had freed her—what the young man beside her said was perfectly true: she had not been a party to the parole—it had been forced upon her. She had not consented to it. Nothing in the world could be clearer than this.