‘How good of you to remember!’ she said, as she took the bouquet from his unresisting hand, and turned again on her footsteps.  He followed her wonderingly across the uneven road towards a narrow aisle of graves on the left.  In another instant she has stooped before a shining white stone, and laid his bouquet reverently upon it.  As he reached her side, he saw that his flowers were almost lost in the vast mass of floral offerings with which the grave of the woman beater was bestrewn.

‘How good of you to remember the anniversary,’ she murmured again.

‘How could I forget it?’ he stammered, astonished.  ’Is not this the end of the terrible twelve-month?’

The soft gratitude died out of her face.  ’Oh, is that what you were thinking of?’

‘What else?’ he murmured, pale with conflicting emotions.

’What else!  I think decency demanded that this day, at least, should be sacred to his memory.  Oh, what brutes men are!’ And she burst into tears.

His patient breast revolted at last.  ‘You said he was the brute!’ he retorted, outraged.

‘Is that your chivalry to the dead?  Oh, my poor Harold, my poor Harold!’

For once her tears could not extinguish the flame of his anger.  ’But you told me he beat you,’ he cried.

‘And if he did, I dare say I deserved it.  Oh, my darling, my darling!’ She laid her face on the stone and sobbed.

John Lefolle stood by in silent torture.  As he helplessly watched her white throat swell and fall with the sobs, he was suddenly struck by the absence of the black velvet band—­the truer mourning she had worn in the lifetime of the so lamented.  A faint scar, only perceptible to his conscious eye, added to his painful bewilderment.

At last she rose and walked unsteadily forward.  He followed her in mute misery.  In a moment or two they found themselves on the outskirts of the deserted heath.  How beautiful stretched the gorsy rolling country!  The sun was setting in great burning furrows of gold and green—­a panorama to take one’s breath away.  The beauty and peace of Nature passed into the poet’s soul.

‘Forgive me, dearest,’ he begged, taking her hand.

She drew it away sharply.  ’I cannot forgive you.  You have shown yourself in your true colours.’

Her unreasonableness angered him again.  ’What do you mean?  I only came in accordance with our long-standing arrangement.  You have put me off long enough.’

’It is fortunate I did put you off long enough to discover what you are.’

He gasped.  He thought of all the weary months of waiting, all the long comedy of telegrams and express letters, the far-off flirtations of the cosy corner, the baffled elopement to Paris.  ‘Then you won’t marry me?’

‘I cannot marry a man I neither love nor respect.’

‘You don’t love me!’ Her spontaneous kiss in his sober Oxford study seemed to burn on his angry lips.