She was so direct, so unimpassioned, that half his distress turned to astonishment, and he faced her as if a calm and reasoned hand had been laid upon the confusion in him.  Meeting his gaze, she unbarred a floodgate of happy tenderness in her eyes.

“Love!” he gasped in it, “I have nothing to do with that.”

“Oh,” she said, “you have everything to do with it.”

Something thrilled him without asking his permission, assuring him that he was a man—­until then a placid theory with an unconscious basis.  It was therefore a blow to his saintship, or it would have been, but he warded it off, flushed and trembling.  It was as if he had been ambuscaded.  He had to hold himself from the ignominy of flight; he rose to cut his way out, making an effort to strike with precision.

“Some perversity has seized you,” he said.  The muscles about his mouth quivered, giving him a curious aspect.  “You mean nothing of what you say.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I—­I cannot think anything else.  It is the only way I can—­I can—­ make excuse.”

“Ah, don’t excuse me!” she murmured, with an astonishing little gay petulance.

“You cannot have thought—­” in spite of himself he made a step towards the door.

“Oh, I did think—­I do think.  And you must not go.”  She too stood up, and stayed him.  “Let us at least see clearly.”  There was a persuading note in her voice, one would have thought that she was dealing with a patient or a child.  “Tell me,” she clasped her hands behind her back and looked at him in marvellous simple candour, “do I really announce this to you?  Was there not in yourself anywhere—­deep down—­any knowledge of it?”

“I did not guess—­I did not dream!”

“And—­now?” she asked.

A heavenly current drifted from her, the words rose and fell on it with the most dazing suggestion in their soft hesitancy.  It must have been by an instinct of her art that her hand went up to the cross on Arnold’s breast and closed over it, so that he should see only her.  The familiar vision of her stood close, looking things intolerably new and different.  Again came out of it that sudden liberty, that unpremeditated rush and shock in him.  He paled with indignation, with the startled resentment of a woman wooed and hostile.  His face at last expressed something definite, it was anger; he stepped back and caught at his hat.  “I am sorry,” he said, “I am sorry.  I thought you infinitely above and beyond all that.”

Hilda smiled and turned away.  If he chose it was his opportunity to go, but he stood regarding her, twirling his hat.  She sat down, clasping her knees, and looked at the floor.  There was a square of sunlight on the carpet, and motes were rising in it.

“Ah well, so did I,” she said meditatively, without raising her eyes.  Then she leaned back in the chair and looked at him, in her level simple way.