He replied in words which he would not dare to have uttered a few hours before.

“And yet, back there when you first asked me to go with you as your husband, you knew what I would find at Adare House?” he asked, his voice low and tense.  “You knew?”

“Yes.”

“Then what has produced the change that makes you fear to have me go on?  Is it because”—­he leaned toward her, and his face was bloodless—­“Is it because you care a little for me?”

“Because I respect you, yes,” she said in a voice that disappointed him.  “I don’t want to hurt you.  I don’t want you to go back into the world thinking of me as you will.  You have been honest with me.  I do not blame you for what happened last night.  The fault was mine.  And I have come to you now, so that you will understand that, no matter how I may appear and act, I have faith and trust in you.  I would give anything that last night might be wiped out of our memories.  That is impossible, but you must not think of it and you must not talk to me any more as you have, until we reach Adare House.  And then—­”

Her white face was pathetic as she turned away from him.

“You will not want to,” she finished.  “After that you will fight for me simply because you are a knight among men, and because you have promised.  There will not even be the promise to bind you, for I release you from that.”

Philip stood silent as she left him.  He knew that to follow her and to force further conversation upon her after what she had said would be little less than brutal.  She had given him to understand that from now on he was to hold himself toward her with greater restraint, and the blood flushed hot and uncomfortable into his face as he realized for the first time how he had overstepped the bounds.

All his life womanhood had been the most beautiful thing in the world to him.  And now there was forced upon him the dread conviction that he had insulted it.  He did not stop to argue that the overwhelming completeness of his love had excused him.  What he thought of now was that he had found Josephine alone, had declared that love for her before he knew her name, and had followed it up by act and word which he now felt to be dishonourable.  And yet, after all, would he have recalled what had happened if he could?  He asked himself that question as he returned to help Jean.  And he found no answer to it until they were in their canoes again and headed up the lake, Josephine sitting with her back to him, her thick silken braid falling in a sinuous and sunlit rope of red gold over her shoulders.  Then he knew that he would not.

Jean gave little rest that day, and by noon they had covered twenty miles of the lake-way.  An hour for dinner, and they went on.  At times Josephine used her paddle, and not once during the day did she sit with her face to Philip.  Late in the afternoon they camped on a portage fifty miles from Adare House.