And yet the Accuser came closer and closer, wrestling with her shrinking heart.  “You can’t live a lie beside him all your life!” “It won’t be a lie.  All that matters to him is what I am now—­not what I was.  And it wasn’t I!—­it was another woman—­a miserable, battered creature who couldn’t help herself.”  “It will rise up between you, and perhaps—­after all—­in some way—­he will discover it.”  “How can he?  Dick and I—­who in all the world knew, but us two?—­and Dick is dead.”  “Are you sure that no one knew:—­that no one saw you?  Think!”

A pale face grew paler in the dim light, as thought hesitated:—­

“There was that wagon—­and the boy—­in the storm.”  “Yes—­what then?” “Well—­what then?  The boy scarcely saw me.”  “He did see you.”  “And if he did—­it is the commonest thing in a Canadian winter to be caught by a storm, to ask shelter from a neighbour.”  “Still—­even if he drew no malicious conclusion, he saw you—­alone in that farm with Dick Tanner, and he probably knew your name.”  “How should he know my name?” “He had seen you before—­you had seen him before.”  “I didn’t know his name—­I don’t know it now.”  “No—­but in passing your farm once, he had dropped a parcel for a neighbour—­and you had seen him once—­at a railway station.”  “Is it the least likely that I shall ever see him again—­or that he remembers seeing me at Dick Tanner’s door?” “Not likely, perhaps—­but possible—­quite possible.”

And while this question and answer passed through the brain, the woman sitting up in bed seemed to be transported to a howling wintry scene of whirling snow—­a November twilight—­and against that background, the hood of a covered wagon, a boy holding the reins, the heavy cape on his shoulders white with snow, the lamps of the wagon shining dimly on him, and making a kind of luminous mist round the cart.  She heard a parley, saw a tall and slender man with fair hair go out to the boy with hot milk and bread, caught directions as to the road, and saw herself as a half-hidden figure in the partially open door.

And then afterwards—­the warm farm kitchen shutting out the storm—­a man at her knees—­his arms round her—­his kisses on her cheek.

And again the irrevocableness of it closed down upon her.  It could never be undone:  that was the terrible commonplace which held her in its grasp.  It could never be wiped out from one human mind, which must bear the burden of it as best it could, till gradually—­steadily—­the life, had been killed out of the ugly, haunting thing, and it had been buried—­drowned, out of sight and memory.

But the piteous dialogue began again.

“How could I have resisted?  I was so miserable—­so lonely—­so weak!” “You didn’t love him!” “No—­but I was alone in the world.”  “Well, then, tell George Ellesborough—­he is a reasonable man—­he would understand.”  “I can’t—­I can’t!  I have deceived him up till now by passing as unmarried.  If I confess this, too, there will be no chance for me.  He’ll never trust me in anything!—­he’ll suspect everything I do or say—­even if he goes on loving me.  And I couldn’t bear it!—­nor could he.”