He has sprung upon the wall, and it is quite suddenly he sees her.  Her attitude makes his heart stand still.  Has it come to this?  Has he brought her to this?  What a child she was when he married her!—­light-hearted, free——­

Free!  Was she free?  This word spoils all his sympathy.  Was she really free?  Did she not love her cousin even then, when she consented to marry him? He springs lightly to the ground; his gun is on his shoulder, but he lays that against a tree, and goes lightly towards her.

How still she is!  How tightly her small hands are clasped!  How very small they are!  Is that the first ring he had given her, shining on her third finger?  She had not flung that back in his face, at all events!  He hardly understands the wild, quick thrill of joy that this knowledge affords him.  And how pale she is!

    “In all her face was not one drop of blood.”

She is staring before her, as if into the future—­as if demanding happiness from it for her youth.  He goes quickly to her.

“I was just getting over that fence there,” says he, in a rather stammering sort of way, the new strange pallor on that small, erstwhile happy face having disarranged his nerves a little, “when I saw you.  I am glad I saw you, as I wanted to say that perhaps I spoke to you too—­roughly last night.”

Tita remains silent.  Something in her whole air seems to him changed.  Her eyes—­her mouth—­what has happened to them?  Such a change!  And all since last night!  Had he indeed been so rough with her as to cause all this?

    “How bitter and winterly waxed last night
    The air that was mild! 
    How nipped with frost were the flowers last night
    That at dawning smiled! 
    How the bird lost the tune of the song last night
    That the spring beguiled!”

Did it all happen last night?  He breaks through his wonder to hear her.

“I don’t know how you dared speak to me at all,” says she at last slowly, deliberately.

Where is the childish anger now that used to irritate—­and amuse him?  It is all gone.  This is hardly Tita, this girl, cold, repellent; it is an absurd thought, but it seems to him that she has grown!

“I spoke—­because——­ I think I explained,” says he, somewhat incoherently, upset not so much by her words (which are strange, too) as by the strange look that accompanies them.

“Ah, explained!” says she.  Her lips curl slightly, and her eyes (always fastened upon his) seem to grow darker.  “If you are coming to explanations——­” says she softly, but with some intensity. "Have you explained things?  And when?  Was it before our marriage?  It should have been, I think!”

Rylton changes colour.  It is such a sudden change that the girl goes over to him and lays her hand upon his chest.

“Did you think—­all this time—­that I did not know?” says she, raising her eyes to his—­such solemn young eyes.  “I have known it a long, long time. Always, I think!  Your mother told me when we went to the Hall after our—­trip abroad.”