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Her lips quivered. “Don’t be angry with me–I can’t help it–I’m not glad or sorry for anything now,” she answered; and her voice matched his for grayness.

They sat down together on a long flat stone half embedded in a wiry clump of whortleberries. Behind them the lonely hillsides rose, brilliant with yellow bracken and the purple of heather. Before them stretched the wide sea. It was a soft, gray day. Streaks of pale sunlight trembled at moments far out on the water. The tide was rising in the little bay above which they sat, and Broomhurst watched the lazy foam-edged waves slipping over the uncovered rocks toward the shore, then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of reaching it. The muffled, pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence. Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern sunshine, of the whir of insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the distance. He turned and looked at his companion.

“I have come thousands of miles to see you,” he said; “aren’t you going to speak to me now I am here?”

“Why did you come? I told you not to come,” she answered, falteringly. “I–” she paused.

“And I replied that I should follow you–if you remember,” he answered, still quietly. “I came because I would not listen to what you said then, at that awful time. You didn’t know /yourself/ what you said. No wonder! I have given you some months, and now I have come.”

There was silence between them. Broomhurst saw that she was crying; her tears fell fast on to her hands, that were clasped in her lap. Her face, he noticed, was thin and drawn.

Very gently he put his arm round her shoulder and drew her nearer to him. She made no resistance; it seemed that she did not notice the movement; and his arm dropped at his side.

“You asked me why I had come. You think it possible that three months can change one very thoroughly, then?” he said, in a cold voice.

“I not only think it possible; I have proved it,” she replied, wearily.

He turned round and faced her.

“You /did/ love me, Kathleen!” he asserted. “You never said so in words, but I know it,” he added, fiercely.

“Yes, I did.”

“And–you mean that you don’t now?”

Her voice was very tired. “Yes; I can’t help it,” she answered; “it has gone–utterly.”

The gray sea slowly lapped the rocks. Overhead the sharp scream of a gull cut through the stillness. It was broken again, a moment afterward, by a short hard laugh from the man.

“Don’t!” she whispered, and laid a hand swiftly on his arm. “Do you think it isn’t worse for me? I wish to God I /did/ love you!” she cried, passionately. “Perhaps it would make me forget that, to all intents and purposes, I am a murderess.

Broomhurst met her wide, despairing eyes with an amazement which yielded to sudden pitying comprehension.

“So that is it, my darling? You are worrying about /that/? You who were as loyal as–“

She stopped him with a frantic gesture.

“Don’t! /don’t!/” she wailed. “If you only knew! Let me try to tell you–will you?” she urged, pitifully. “It may be better if I tell some one–if I don’t keep it all to myself, and think, and /think/.”

She clasped her hands tight, with the old gesture he remembered when she was struggling for self-control, and waited a moment.

Presently she began to speak in a low, hurried tone: “It began before you came. I know now what the feeling was that I was afraid to acknowledge to myself. I used to try and smother it; I used to repeat things to myself all day–poems, stupid rhymes–/anything/ to keep my thoughts quite underneath–but I–/hated/ John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say, ‘Why did you marry him?’ ” She looked drearily over the placid sea. “Why /did/ I marry him? I don’t know; for the reason that hundreds of ignorant, inexperienced girls marry, I suppose. My home wasn’t a happy one. I was miserable, and oh–/restless/. I wonder if men know what it feels like to be restless? Sometimes I think they can’t even guess. John wanted me very badly; nobody wanted me at home particularly. There didn’t seem to be any point in my life. Do you understand? . . . Of course, being alone with him in that little camp in that silent plain”–she shuddered–“made things worse. My nerves went all to pieces. Everything he said, his voice, his accent, his walk, the way he ate, irritated me so that I longed to rush out sometimes and shriek–and go /mad/. Does it sound ridiculous to you to be driven mad by such trifles? I only know I used to get up from the table sometimes and walk up and down outside, with both hands over my mouth to keep myself quiet. And all the time I /hated/ myself–how I hated myself! I never had a word from him that wasn’t gentle and tender. I believe he loved the ground I walked on. Oh, it is /awful/ to be loved like that when you–” She drew in her breath with a sob. “I–I–it made me sick for him to come near me–to touch me.” She stopped a moment.