“Go!” she cried suddenly.  “If ever you loved me, get out of my sight now, or you’ll make me want to kill myself again.”

He saw the time was come for strong self-assertion, and spoke.

“Listen!” he said.  “You don’t understand, but you must.  I’m the only man in the world who knows—­the only one, and I’ve told you because it was stamped into my brain to tell you, and because I love you perhaps better than one creature has any right to love another.”

“You knaw.  Isn’t it enough?  Who else did I care for?  Who else mattered to me?  Mother or brother or other folk?  I pray you to go an’ leave me.  God knaws how hard it was to hide it, but I hugged it an’ suffered more ’n any but a mother could fathom ’cause things weer as they weer.  Then came this trouble, an’ still none seed.  But ‘t was meant you should, an’ the rest doan’t matter.  I’d so soon go back now as not.”

“So you shall,” he answered calmly; “only hear this first.  Last time I spoke about what was in my heart, Chris, you told me you could love me, but that you would not marry me, and I said I would never ask you again.  I shall keep my word, sweetheart.  I shall not ask; I shall take without asking.  You love me; that is all I care for.  The little boy came between last time; now nothing does.”

He took the woman in his arms and kissed her, but the next moment he was flying to where water lay in a ditch, for his unexpected attitude had overpowered Chris. She raised her hands to his shoulders, uttered a faint cry, then slipped heavily out of his arms in a faint.  The man rushed this way and that, the child sat and howled noisily, the woman remained long unconscious, and heavy rain began to fall out of the darkness; yet, to his dying day that desolate spot of earth brought light to Martin’s eyes as often as he passed it.

Chris presently recovered her senses, and spoke words that made her lover’s heart leap.  She uttered them in a sad, low voice, but her hand was in his, pressing it close the while.

“Awften an’ awften I’ve axed the A’mighty to give me wan little glint o’ knawledge as how ’twould all end.  If I’d knawed!  But I never guessed how big your sawl was, Martin.  I never thought you was the manner of man to love a woman arter that.”

“God knows what’s in my heart, Chris.”

“I’ll tell ‘e everything some day.  Lookin’ back it doan’t ’pear no ways wicked, though it may seem so in cold daylight to cold hearts.”

“Come, come with me, for the rain grows harder.  I know where I can hire a covered carriage at an inn.  ’Tis only five minutes farther on, and poor Tim’s unhappy.”

“He’m hungry.  You won’t be hard ’pon my li’l bwoy if I come to ’e, Martin?”

“You know as well as I can tell you.  There’s one other thing.  About Chagford, Chris?  Are you afraid of it?  I’ll turn my back on it if you like.  I’ll take you to Okehampton now if you would rather go there.”