“How can I when I don’t know?” He rose.  “See here—­I oughtn’t to look at you—­I oughtn’t to touch you—­I oughtn’t to live with you, as long as I don’t know.  You don’t know, either.”

“No,” she said quietly.  “I don’t know.  Does that matter so very much when I understand?”

“Ah, if you could understand.  But you never could.”

“I do.  Supposing I had known, do you think I should not have forgiven you?”

“I’m certain you wouldn’t.  You couldn’t.  Not that.”

“But,” she said, “I did know.”

His mouth twitched.  His eyelids dropped before her gaze.

“At least,” she said, “I thought—­”

“You thought that?”

“Yes.”

“What made you think it?”

“I saw her there.”

“You saw her?  You thought that, and yet—­you would have let me come back to you?”

“Yes.  I thought that.”

As he stood before her, shamed, and uncertain, and unhappy, the new soul that had been born in her pleaded for him and assured her of his innocence.

“But,” she said again, “I do not think it now.”

“You—­you don’t believe it?”

“No.  I believe in you.”

“You believe in me?  After everything?”

“After everything.”

“And you would have forgiven me that?”

“I did forgive you.  I forgave you all the time I thought it.  There’s nothing that I wouldn’t forgive you now.  You know it.”

“I thought you might forgive me.  But I never thought you’d let me come back—­after that.”

“You haven’t.  You haven’t.  You never left me.  It’s I who have come back to you.”

“Nancy—­” he whispered.

“It’s I who need forgiveness.  Forgive me.  Forgive me.”

“Forgive you?  You?”

“Yes, me.”

Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession.

“I was unfaithful to you.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, dear.  You couldn’t have been unfaithful to me.”

“If I had been, would you have forgiven me?”

He looked at her a long time.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“You could have forgiven me that?”

“I could have forgiven you anything.”

She knew it.  There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity.  “Well,” she said, “you have worse things to forgive me.”

“What have I to forgive?”

“Everything.  If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have had to ask for forgiveness now.”

“Perhaps not, Nancy.  But that wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my fault.  It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end.”

“No, no.”

“Yes, yes.  Mr. Hannay knew that.  He told me so.”

“When?”

“At Scarby.”

Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart.

“He was a brute,” he said, “to tell you that.”

“He wasn’t.  He was kind.  He knew.”