The conflict in his mind had carried him to the Rock.  Here, as he expected, he found Mary already arrived.  He ascended to the little plateau and dropped wearily to the moss.  His face had gone very white in the last quarter of an hour.

“You see now why I asked you to come to-day,” she said without preliminary.  “Now you have seen them, and there is nothing more to conceal.”

“I know, I know,” he replied dully.  “I am trying to think it out.  I can’t see it yet.”

They took entirely for granted that each knew the subject of the other’s thoughts.  The girl seemed much the more self-possessed of the two.

“We may as well understand each other,” she said quietly, without emotion.  “You have told me a certain thing, and have asked me for a certain answer.  I could not give it to you before without deceiving you.  Now the answer depends on you.  I have deceived you in a way,” she went on more earnestly, “but I did not mean to.  I did not realize the difference, truly I didn’t, until I saw the girl on the train.  Then I knew the difference between her and me, and between her’s and mine.  And when you turned away, I saw that you were her kind, and I saw, too, that you ought to know everything there was about me.  Then you spoke.”

“I meant what I said, too,” he interrupted.  “You must believe that, Mary, whatever comes.”

“I was sorry you did,” she went on, as though she had not heard him.  Then with just a touch of impatience tingeing the even calm of her voice, “Oh, why will men insist on saying those things!” she cried.  “The way to win a girl is not thus.  He should see her often, without speaking of love, being everything to her, until at last she finds she can not live without him.”

“Have I been that to you, Mary?  Has it come to that with me?” he asked wistfully.

“Heaven help me, I am afraid it has!” she cried, burying her face in her hands.

A great gladness leaped up into his face, and died as the blaze of a fire leaps up and expires.

“That makes it easier—­and harder,” he said.  “It is bad enough as it is.  I don’t know how I can make you understand, dear.”

“I understand more than you think,” she replied, becoming calm again, and letting her hands fall into her lap.  “I am going to speak quite plainly.  You love me, Ben—­ah, don’t I know it!” she cried, with a sudden burst of passion.  “I have seen it in your eyes these many days.  I have heard it in your voice.  I have felt it welling out from your great heart.  It has been sweet to me—­so sweet!  You can not know, no man ever could know, how that love of yours has filled my soul and my heart until there was room for nothing else in the whole wide world!”

“You love me!” he said wonderingly.

“If I had not known that, do you think I would have endured a moment’s hesitation after you had seen the objectionable features of my life?  Do you think that if I had the slightest doubts of your love, I could now understand why you hesitate?  But I do, and I honour you for it.”