’I don’t know what the letter would have seemed to me if I had been able to judge it with my ordinary mind.  I couldn’t:  I was going through too much.  I believed it false.  On Monday I went to Southampton, and from there at night to Jersey; it was the earliest that I could get there.’

‘You went to Jersey?’

’I had no choice.  I had to see you.  And I found you had gone away on Saturday morning, gone to France.  It was only Saturday night that I got your letter.  There was no word in it about going to France; instead of that, you said plainly that you would be in Jersey for a week or more.’

‘It is true.  I see how I have made evidence against myself.’

He said it with impatience, but at once added in a steadier voice: 

’I wrote the letter and posted it on Friday night, when I had only been at St. Aubin’s half a day.  The very next morning I was compelled by restlessness to give up my idea of remaining there.  When I wrote to you I had no thought of leaving the island.’

How pleasant it was to be able to speak with unshadowed veracity!  Walter all but smiled, and, when the other made no reply, he went on in a voice almost of pleading: 

’You believe this?  Is your mind so set against me that you will accuse me of any cowardice rather than credit my word?’

A change came over Gilbert’s face.  It was wrung with pain, and as he looked up it seemed to cost him a horrible effort to speak.

‘If,’ he said, ’in a moment of temptation you did her the greatest wrong that a man can do to a woman, you would perhaps say and do anything rather than confess it.’

Walter tried to meet those eyes steadily, but failed.  He broke forth into passionate self-defence.

’That means you think the worst of me that one man can think of another.  You are wrong You are basely wrong!  You speak of a moment of temptation.  Suppose me to have suffered that; what sort of temptation do you suppose would have assailed me?  A man is tempted according to his fibre.  Do you class me with those who can only be tempted by base suggestions?  What reason have I ever given you to think of me so?  Suppose me to have been tempted.  You conclude that I must have aimed at stealing the girl from you solely to gratify myself, heedless of her, heedless of you.  Such a motive as that is to outweigh every higher instinct I possess, to blind me to past and future, to make me all at once a heartless, unimaginative brute.  That is your view of my character, Grail!’

Gilbert had not the appearance of a man who listens.  Since entering the room, he had not moved from the spot where he stood, and now, with his head again drooping, he seemed sunk in a reverie of the profoundest sadness.  But he heard, and he strove to believe.  A fortnight ago he would not have thought it possible for Walter Egremont to speak a word of which the sincerity would seem doubtful.  Since then he had spent