In a moment I was by her, very close. I looked full in her eyes, and they fled behind covering lids; the little hand, tightly clenched, hung by her side. What had I to lose? Was I not already banned for forwardness? I would be forward still, and justify the sentence by an after-crime. I took the hanging hand in both of mine. She started, and I loosed it; but no rebuke came, and she did not fly. The far-off stir of coming victory moved in my blood; not yet to win, but now to know that win you will sends through a man an exultation, more sweet because it is still timid. I watched her face--it was very pale--and again took her hand. The lids of her eyes rose now an instant, and disclosed entreaty.

I was ruthless; our hearts are strange, and cruelty or the desire of mastery mingled with love in my tightened grasp. One by one I bent her fingers back; the crushed paper lay in a palm that was streaked to red and white. With one hand still I held hers, with the other I spread out the paper. "You mustn't read it," she murmured. "Oh, you mustn't read it." I paid no heed, but held it up. A low exclamation of wonder broke from me. The scrawl that I had seen at Canterbury now met me again, plain and unmistakable in its laborious awkwardness. "In pay for your dagger," it had said before. Were five words the bounds of Nell's accomplishment? She had written no more now. Yet before she had seemed to say much in that narrow limit; and much she said now.

There was long silence between us; my eyes were intent on her veiled eyes.

"You needed this to tell you?" I said at last.

"You loved her, Simon."

I would not allow the plea. Shall not a thing that has become out of all reason to a man's own self thereby blazon its absurdity to the whole world?

"So long ago!" I cried scornfully.

"Nay, not so long ago," she murmured, with a note of resentment in her voice.

Even then we might have fallen out; we were in an ace of it, for I most brutally put this question:

"You waited here for me to pa.s.s?"

I would have given my ears not to have said it; what availed that? A thing said is a thing done, and stands for ever amid the irrevocable.

For an instant her eyes flashed in anger; then she flushed suddenly, her lips trembled, her eyes grew dim, yet through the dimness mirth peeped out.

"I dared not hope you'd pa.s.s," she whispered.

"I am the greatest villain in the world!" I cried. "Barbara, you had no thought that I should pa.s.s!"

Again came silence. Then I spoke, and softly:

"And you--is it long since you----?"

She held out her hands towards me, and in an instant was in my arms.

First she hid her face, but then drew herself back as far as the circle of my arm allowed. Her dark eyes met mine full and direct in a confession that shamed me but shamed her no more; her shame was swallowed in the sweet pride of surrender.

"Always," said she, "always; from the first through all; always, always." It seemed that though she could not speak that word enough.

In truth I could scarcely believe it; save when I looked in her eyes, I could not believe it.

"But I wouldn't tell you," she said. "I swore you should never know.

Simon, do you remember how you left me?"

It seemed that I must play penitent now.

"I was too young to know----" I began.

"I was younger and not too young," she cried. "And all through those days at Dover I didn't know. And when we were together I didn't know.

Ah, Simon, when I flung your guinea in the sea, you must have known!"

"On my faith, no," I laughed. "I didn't see the love in that, sweetheart."

"I'm glad there was no woman there to tell you what it meant," said Barbara. "And even at Canterbury I didn't know. Simon, what brought you to my door that night?"

I answered her plainly, more plainly than I could at any other time, more plainly, it may be, than even then I should:

"She bade me follow her, and I followed her so far."

"You followed her?"

"Ay. But I heard your voice through the door, and stopped."

"You stopped for my voice; what did I say?"

"You sung how a lover had forsaken his love. And I heard and stayed."

"Ah, why didn't you tell me then?"

"I was afraid, sweetheart."

"Of what? Of what?"

"Why, of you. You had been so cruel."

Barbara's head, still strained far as could be from mine, now drew nearer by an ace, and then she launched at me the charge of most enormity, the indictment that justified all my punishment.

"You had kissed her before my eyes, here, sir, where we are now, in my own Manor Park," said Barbara.

I took my arms from about her, and fell humbly on my knee.

"May I kiss so much as your hand?" said I in utter abas.e.m.e.nt.

She put it suddenly, eagerly, hurriedly to my lips.

"Why did she write to me?" she whispered.

"Nay, love, I don't know."

"But I know. Simon, she loves you."

"It would afford no reason if she did. And I think----"

"It would and she does. Simon, of course she does."

"I think rather that she was sorry for----"

"Not for me!" cried Barbara with great vehemence. "I will not have her sorry for me!"

"For you!" I exclaimed in ridicule. (It does not matter what I had been about to say before.) "For you! How should she? She wouldn't dare!"

"No," said Barbara. One syllable can hold a world of meaning.

"A thousand times, no!" cried I.