“No, you would be called on to keep her happy.  And she couldn’t remain happy if she were married to you.  It isn’t possible.  She couldn’t live with you any more than—­than a humming-bird could live with a hawk.”

They both smiled, rather nervously.

“But I’m not a hawk,” he insisted.  “I’m much more a humming-bird than you imagine.  You think me some sort of creature of prey because you believe—­that I did—­what I was accused of—­”

The circumstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.

“I don’t attach any importance to that,” she said, with a tranquillity that startled him.  “I suppose I ought to, but I never have.  If you killed your uncle, it seems to me—­very natural.  He provoked you.  He deserved it.  My father would have done it certainly.”

“But I didn’t, you see.  That puts another color on the case.”

“It doesn’t for me.  And it doesn’t, as it affects Evie.  Whether you’re innocent or guilty—­and I don’t say I think you to be guilty—­I’ve never thought much about it—­but whether you’re guilty or not, your life is the kind of tragedy Evie couldn’t share.  It would kill her.”

“It wouldn’t kill her, if she didn’t know anything about it.”

“But she would know.  You can’t keep that sort of thing from a wife.  She wouldn’t be married to you a year before she had discovered that you were—­a—­”

“An escaped convict.  Why not say it?”

“I wasn’t going to say it.  But at least she would know that you were a man who was pretending to be—­something that he wasn’t.”

“You mean an impostor.  Well, I’ve already explained to you that I’m an impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I’m not to blame—­”

“I quite see the force of that.  But Evie wouldn’t.  Don’t you understand?  That’s my point.  She would only see the horror of it, and she would be overwhelmed.  It wouldn’t matter to her that you could bring forward arguments in your own defence.  She wouldn’t be capable of understanding them.  You must see for yourself that mentally—­and spiritually—­just as bodily—­she’s as fragile as a butterfly.  She couldn’t withstand a storm.  She’d be crushed by it.”

“I don’t think you do her justice.  If she were to discover—­I mean, if the worst were to come to the worst—­well, you can see how it’s been with yourself.  You’ve known from the beginning all there is to know—­and yet—­”

“I’m different.”

She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both.  While she could hear herself saying inwardly, “I’d rather go on waiting for him—­uselessly,” he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the words, “Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn’t know anything about it.”  Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene in which he had said, “My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to dispose of ...” and each was afraid that the other was doing so.