“Well, after that, I was tired—­so tired!  Everything seemed to go out of life.  It wasn’t that I loved him any longer,—­all had been crushed.  But the illusion was gone, and I saw myself as I was.  And for the first time in my life I felt defenceless, helpless.  I wanted refuge.  Did you ever hear of Jennings Howe?”

“The architect?”

Alison nodded.  “Of course you must have—­he is so well known.  He has been a widower for several years.  He liked my work, saw its defects, and was always frank about them, and I designed a good many gardens in connection with his houses.  He himself is above all things an artist, and he fell into the habit of coming to my studio and giving me friendly advice, in the nicest way.  He seemed to understand that I was going through some sort of a crisis.  He called it ‘too much society.’  And then, without any warning, he asked me to marry him.

“That is why I came out here—­to think it over.  I didn’t love him, and I told him so, but I respected him.

“He never compromised in his art, and I have known him over and over to refuse houses because certain conditions were stipulated.  To marry him was an acknowledgment of defeat.  I realized that.  But I had come to the extremity where I wanted peace—­peace and protection.  I wanted to put myself irrevocably beyond the old life, which simply could not have gone on, and I saw myself in the advancing years becoming tawdry and worn, losing little by little what I had gained at a price.

“So I came here—­to reflect, to see, as it were, if I could find something left in me to take hold of, to build upon, to begin over again, perhaps, by going back to the old associations.  I could think of no better place, and I knew that my father would, be going away after a few weeks, and that I should be lone, yet with an atmosphere back of me,—­my old atmosphere.  That was why I went to church the first Sunday, in order to feel more definitely that atmosphere, to summon up more completely the image of my mother.  More and more, as the years have passed, I have thought of her in moments of trouble.  I have recovered her as I never had hoped to do in Mr. Bentley.  Isn’t it strange,” she exclaimed wonderingly, “that he should have come into both our lives, with such an influence, at this time?”

“And then I met you, talked to you that afternoon in the garden.  Shall I make a complete confession?  I wrote to Jennings Howe that very week that I could not marry him.”

“You knew!” Hodder exclaimed:  “You knew then?”

“Ah, I can’t tell what I knew—­or when.  I knew, after I had seen you, that I couldn’t marry him!  Isn’t that enough?”

He drew in his breath deeply.

“I should be less than a man if I refused to take you, Alison.  And—­no matter what happens, I can and will find some honest work to support you.  But oh, my dear, when I think of it, the nobility and generosity of what you have done appalls me.”