‘Except your father and mother, you mean?’

‘They do not know.’

Though so troubled, she was yet able to ask herself whether his delicacy was sufficiently developed to enjoin silence.  The man had made such strange revelation of himself, she felt unable to predict his course.  No refinement in him would now have surprised her; but neither would any outbreak of boorishness.  He seemed capable of both.  His next question augured ill.

‘Of course it is not any one in Dunfield?’

‘It is not.’

Jealousy was torturing him.  He was quite conscious that he should have refrained from a single question, yet he could no more keep these back than he could the utterance of his passion.

‘Will you—­’

He hesitated.

‘May I leave you, Mr. Dagworthy?’ Emily asked, seeing that he was not likely to quit her.  She moved to take the books from the chair.

’One minute more.—­Will you tell me who it is?—­I am a brute to ask you, but—­if you—­Good God!  How shall I bear this?’

He turned his back upon her; she saw him quiver.  It was her impulse to walk from the garden, but she feared to pass him.

He faced her again.  Yes, the man could suffer.

‘Will you tell me who it is?’ he groaned rather than spoke.  ’You don’t believe that I should speak of it?  But I feel I could bear it better; I should know for certain it was no use hoping.’

Emily could not answer.

‘It is some one in London?’

’Yes, Mr. Dagworthy, I cannot tell you more than that.  Please do not ask more.’

’I won’t.  Of course your opinion of me is worse than ever.  That doesn’t matter much.—­If you could kill as easily as you can drive a man mad, I would ask you to still have pity on me.—­I’m forgetting:  you want me to go first, so that you can lock up the garden.—­Good-bye!’

He did not offer his hand, but cast one look at her, a look Emily never forgot, and walked quickly away.

Emily could not start at once homewards.  When it was certain that Dagworthy had left the garden, she seated herself; she had need of rest and of solitude to calm her thoughts.  Her sensation was that of having escaped a danger, the dread of which thrilled in her.  Though fear had been allayed for an interval, it regained its hold upon her towards the end of the dialogue; the passion she had witnessed was so rude, so undisciplined, it seemed to expose elementary forces, which, if need be, would set every constraint at defiance.  It was no exaggeration to say that she did not feel safe in the man’s presence.  The possibility of such a feeling had made itself known to her even during the visit to his house; to find herself suddenly the object of his almost frenzied desire was to realize how justly her instinct had spoken.  This was not love, as she understood it, but a terrible possession which might find assuagement in inflicting some fearful