Hubert kept silence for a moment.

’It is all true.  Of course it only means that I am savagely jealous.  But I cannot—­upon my life I cannot—­understand her having given her love to such a man as that!’

Mr. Wyvern seemed to regard the landscape.  There was a sad smile on his countenance.

‘Let there be an end of it,’ Hubert resumed.  ’I didn’t mean to say anything to you about the letter.  Now, we’ll talk of other things.  Well, I am going to have a summer among the German galleries; perhaps I shall find peace there.  You have let your son know that I am coming?’

The vicar nodded.  They continued their walk along the top of the hill.  Presently Mr. Wyvern stopped and faced his companion.

’Are you serious in what you said just now?  I mean about her love for Mutimer?’

‘Serious?  Of course I am.  Why should you ask such a question?’

’Because I find it difficult to distinguish between the things a young man says in jealous pique and the real belief he entertains when he is not throwing savage words about.  You have convinced yourself that she loved her husband in the true sense of the word?’

’The conviction was forced upon me.  Why did she marry him at all?  What led her to give herself, heart and soul, to Socialism, she who under ordinary circumstances would have shrunk from that and all other isms?  Why should she make it a special entreaty to me to pursue her husband’s work?  The zeal for his memory is nothing unanticipated; it issues naturally from her former state of mind.’

‘Your vehemence,’ replied the vicar, smiling, ’is sufficient proof that you don’t think it impossible for all these questions to be answered in another sense.  I can’t pretend to have read the facts of her life infallibly, but suppose I venture a hint or two, just to give you matter for thought.  Why she married him I cannot wholly explain to myself, but remember that she took that step very shortly after being brought to believe that you, my good friend, were utterly unworthy of any true woman’s devotion.  Remember, too, her brother’s influence, and—­well, her mother’s.  Now, on the evening before she accepted Mutimer she called at the Vicarage alone.  Unfortunately I was away—­was walking with you, in fact.  What she desired to say to me I can only conjecture; but it is not impossible that she was driven by the common impulse which sends young girls to their pastor when they are in grievous trouble and without other friends.’

‘Why did you never tell me of that?’ cried Hubert.

’Because it would have been useless, and, to tell you the truth, I felt I was in an awkward position, not far from acting indiscreetly.  I did go to see her the next morning, but only saw her mother, and heard of the engagement.  Adela never spoke to me of her visit.’

’But she may have come for quite other reasons.  Her subsequent behaviour remains.’