Towards ten o’clock, wandering restless, I snatched up a book, which I had no wish to read, and went to the arbor where I had so often discoursed to Sylvia about children’s cruelty to birds.  Through the fluttering leaves the sunlight dripped as a weightless shower of gold, and the long pendants of young fruit swayed gently in their cool waxen greenness.  Where some rotting planks crossed the top of the arbor a blue-jay sat on her coarse nest; and presently the mate flew to her with a worm, and then talked to her in a low voice, as much as saying that they must now leave the place forever.  I was thinking how love softens even the voice of this file-throated screamer, when along the garden walk came the rustle of a woman’s clothes, and, springing up, I stood face to face with Georgiana.

“What have you done?” she implored.

“What have you done?  I answered as quickly.

“Oh, Adam, Adam!  You have killed it!  How could you?  How could you?”

“. . .  Is he dead, Georgiana?  Is he dead?. . .”

I forgot everything else, and pulling my hat down over my eyes, turned from her in the helpless shock of silence that came with those irreparable words.

Then in ungovernable anger, suffering, remorse, I turned upon her where she sat:  “It is you who killed him!  Why do you come here to blame me?  And now you pretend to be sorry.  You felt no pity when pity would have done some good.  Trifler!  Hypocrite!

“It is false!” she cried, her words flashing from her whole countenance, her form drawn up to repel the shock of the blow.

“Did you not ask me for him?”

“No!”

“Oh, deny it all!  It is a falsehood—­invented by me on the spot. 
You know nothing of it!  You did not ask me to do this!  And when
I have yielded, you have not run to reproach me here and to cry,
‘How could you?  How could you?’”

“No!  No!  Every word of it—­”

“Untruth added to it all!  Oh, that I should have been so deceived, blinded, taken in!”

“Adam!”

“Lovely innocence!  It is too much!  Go away!”

“I will not stand this any longer!” she cried.  “I will go away; but not till I have told you why I have acted as I have.”

“It is too late for that!  I do not care to hear!”

“Then you shall hear!” she replied.  “You shall know that it is because I have believed you capable of speaking to me as you have just spoken; believed you at heart unsparing and unjust.  You think I asked you to do what you have done?  No!  I asked you whether you would be willing to do it; and when you said you would not, I saw then—­by your voice, your eyes, your whole face and manner—­that you would.  Saw it as plainly at that moment, in spite of your denial, as I see it now—­the cruelty in you, the unfaithfulness, the willingness to betray.  It was for this reason—­not because I heard you refuse, but because I saw you consent—­that I could not forgive you.”