“Imbecile that I am,” I murmured.  “If I had only known!”

“Well, if you had known,” said she; “what difference could it have made to you?”

This question she asked without looking at me, but I noted that her cheek had grown a shade paler.

“Only this,” I answered.  “That I should have been spared many a day and night of needless self-reproach and misery.”

“But why?” she asked, still keeping her face averted.  “What had you to reproach yourself with?”

“A great deal,” I answered, “if you consider my supposed position.  If you think of me as the trusted agent of a man, helpless and deeply wronged—­a man whose undeserved misfortunes made every demand upon chivalry and generosity; if you think of me as being called upon to protect and carry comfort to the woman whom I regarded as, virtually, that man’s betrothed wife; and then if you think of me as proceeding straightway, before I had known her twenty-four hours, to fall hopelessly in love with her myself, you will admit that I had something to reproach myself with.”

She was still silent, rather pale and very thoughtful, and she seemed to breathe more quickly than usual.

“Of course,” I continued, “you may say that it was my own look-out, that I had only to keep my own counsel, and no one would be any the worse.  But there’s the mischief of it.  How can a man who is thinking of a woman morning, noon and night; whose heart leaps at the sound of her coming, whose existence is a blank when she is away from him—­a blank which he tries to fill by recalling, again and again, all that she has said and the tones of her voice, and the look that was in her eyes when she spoke—­how can he help letting her see, sooner or later, that he cares for her?  And if he does, when he has no right to, there is an end of duty and chivalry and even common honesty.”

“Yes, I understand now,” said Juliet softly.  “Is this the way?” She tripped up the steps leading to Fountain Court and I followed cheerfully.  Of course it was not the way, and we both knew it, but the place was silent and peaceful, and the plane-trees cast a pleasant shade on the gravelled court.  I glanced at her as we walked slowly towards the fountain.  The roses were mantling in her cheeks now and her eyes were cast down, but when she lifted them to me for an instant, I saw that they were shining and moist.

“Did you never guess?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied in a low voice, “I guessed; but—­but then,” she added shyly, “I thought I had guessed wrong.”

We walked on for some little time without speaking again until we came to the further side of the fountain, where we stood listening to the quiet trickle of the water, and watching the sparrows as they took their bath on the rim of the basin.  A little way off another group of sparrows had gathered with greedy joy around some fragments of bread that had been scattered abroad by the benevolent Templars, and hard by a more sentimentally-minded pigeon, unmindful of the crumbs and the marauding sparrows, puffed out his breast and strutted and curtsied before his mate with endearing gurgles.