“Yes, I know!” Julia said quickly, and fell silent again.

“Is it your own mother’s need of you?” the man asked after a pause.

“No.”  Julia gave a cautious glance at the kitchen door behind her.  “No—­Aunt May is wonderful with her.  Muriel’s at home a good deal, and Geraldine very near,” she said.  “And more than that, this separation between you and me worries Mother terribly; she doesn’t understand it.  She’s very different in these days, Jim, so gentle and good and brave—­I never saw such a change!  No, she’d love to have me go if it was the best thing to do—­it’s not that—–­”

Her voice dropped on a note of fatigue.  Her eyes continued to dwell on the child in the garden.

“I’ve done all I can do,” Jim said.  “Don’t punish me any more!”

Julia laughed in a worried fashion, not meeting his eyes.

“There you are,” she said, faintly impatient, “assuming that I am aggrieved about it, assuming that I am sitting back, sulking, and waiting for you to humiliate yourself!  My dear Jim, I’m not doing anything of the kind.  I don’t hold you as wholly responsible for all this—­how could I?  I know too well that I myself am—­or was—­ to blame.  All these years, when people have been blaming you and pitying me, I’ve longed to burst out with the truth, to tell them what you were too chivalrous to tell!  For your sake and Anna’s I couldn’t do it, of course, but you may imagine that it’s made me a silent champion of yours, just the same!  But our marriage was a mistake, Jim,” she went on slowly and thoughtfully.  “It was all very well for me to try to make myself over; I couldn’t make you!  I never should have tried.  Theoretically, I had made a clean breast of it, and was forgiven; but actually, the law was too strong.  It’s hard and strange that it should be so, isn’t it?  I don’t understand it; I never shall.  For still it seems as if the punishment followed, not so much the fact, as the fact’s being made known.  If I had robbed some one fifteen years ago, or taken the name of the Lord in vain, I wonder if it would have been the same?  As for keeping holy the seventh day, and honouring your father and mother, and not coveting your neighbour’s goods, how little they seem to count!  Even the most virtuous and rigid people would forgive and forget fast enough in those cases.  It’s all a puzzle.”  Julia’s voice and look, which had grown dreamy, now brightened suddenly.  “And so the best thing to do about it,” she went on, “seems to me to make your own conscience your moral law, and feel that what you have repented truly, is truly forgiven.  So much for me.”  She met his eyes.  “But, my dear Jim, I never could take it for granted again that you felt so about it!”

“Then you do me an injustice,” said Jim, “for I swear—–­”