Her answer came quickly:  “I do not know that my husband is dead.  It has never been verified.”

He was tempted again, but only for an instant.  “It is an unfortunate position for you,” he replied.

He had intended saying it in a tone of sympathy, but at the moment he saw Hagar looking up toward them from the abbey, and an involuntary but ulterior meaning crept into the words.  He loved, and he could detect love, as he thought.  He knew by the look that she swept from Hagar to him that she loved the artist.  She was agitated now, and in her agitation began to pull off her glove.  For the moment the situation was his.

“I can understand your being wicked,” she said keenly, “but not your being cowardly.  That is and was unpardonable.”

“That is and was,” he repeated after her.  “When was I cowardly?” He was composed, though there was a low fire in his eyes.

“Then and now.”

He understood well.  “I, too, was a coward once,” he said, looking her steadily in the eyes, “and that was when I hid from a young girl a miserable sin of mine.  To have spoken would have been better, for I could but have lost her, as I’ve lost her now forever.”

She was moved, but whether it was with pity or remembrance or reproach he did not know and never asked, for, looking at her ungloved hand as she passed it over her eyes wearily, he saw the ring he had given her twelve years before.  He stepped forward quickly with a half smothered cry and caught her fingers.  “You wear my ring!” he said.  “Marion, you wear my ring!  You do care for me still?”

She drew her hand away.  “No,” she said firmly.  “No, Mark Telford, I do not care for you.  I have worn this ring as a warning to me—­my daily crucifixion.  Read what is inside it.”

She drew it off and handed it to him.  He took it and read the words, “You—­told—­a—­lie.”  This was the bitterest moment in his life.  He was only to know one more bitter, and it would come soon.  He weighed the ring up and down in his palm and laughed a dry, crackling laugh.

“Yes,” he said, “you have kept the faith—­that you hadn’t in me—­tolerably well.  A liar, a coward, and one who strikes from behind—­that is it, isn’t it?  You kept the faith, and I didn’t fight the good fight, eh?  Well, let it stand so.  Will you permit me to keep this ring?  The saint needed it to remind her to punish the sinner.  The sinner would like to keep it now, for then he would have a hope that the saint would forgive him some day.”

The bitterness of his tone was merged at last into a strange tenderness and hopelessness.