“Yes, I have known,” she replied, freeing the imprisoned hand and turning from him.  “And I have been sorry, sorry; not less for you than for poor Nancy Bryerson.  You know now what I thought—­what I had to think—­when I saw you with her this evening.”

It was slowly beating its way into his brain.  Little things, atoms of suggestion, were separating themselves from the mass of things disregarded to cluster thickly on this nucleus of revealment:  the old story of his companying with Nan on the mountain; his uncle’s and Japheth’s accusation at the time; and now the old moonshiner’s enmity, Japheth’s meaning look and distrustful silence, Nan’s appearance with a child bearing his own name, the glances askance in Hargis’s store when he was buying the little stock of necessaries for the poor outcast.  It was all plain enough.  For reasons best known to herself, Nan had not revealed the name of her betrayer, and all Gordonia, and all Paradise, believed him to be the man.  Even Ardea ...

She had moved aside out of the square of window light, and he followed her.

“Tell me,” he said thickly; “you heard this:  you have believed it.  Have I been misjudging you?”

“Not more than I misjudged you, perhaps.  But that is all over, now:  I am trusting you again, Tom.  Only, as I said before, you mustn’t try me too hard.”

“Let me understand,” he went on, still in the same strained tone.  “Knowing this, or believing it, you could still find a place in your heart for me—­you could still forgive me, Ardea?”

“I could still be your friend; yes,” she replied.  “I believed—­others believed—­that your punishment would be great enough; there are all the coming years for you to be sorry in, Tom.  But in the fullness of time I meant to remind you of your duty.  The time has come; you must play the man’s part now.  What have you done with her?”

“Wait a moment.  I must know one other thing,” he insisted.  “You heard this before you went to Europe?”

“Long before.”

“And it didn’t make any difference in the way you felt toward me?”

“It did; it made the vastest difference.”  They were pacing slowly up and down the portico, and she waited until they had made the turn at the Woodlawn end before she went on.  “I thought I knew you when we were boy and girl together, and, girl-like, I suppose I had idealized you in some ways.  I thought I knew your wickednesses, and that they were not weaknesses; so—­so it was a miserable shock.  But it was not for me to judge you—­only as you might rise or sink from that desperate starting point.  When I came home I was sure that you had risen; I have been sure of it ever since until—­until these few wretched hours to-night.  They are past, and now I’m going to be sure of it some more, Tom.”

It was his turn to be silent, and they had measured twice the length of the pillared floor when at last he said: