The deep tones of the Cathedral organ thrilled across the quiet garden. There came the chanting of boys’ voices, and then a silence. She wandered on through the enchanted stillness, past the cloister arch, and so by winding paths down to the haunted water whither her Fate had led her on that summer night that seemed so long ago.

Her tears had ceased. She walked like a nun, her hands folded before her. The pain in her heart was wonderfully stilled. She was not thinking of herself any more, but of Tetherstones, and the grim secret that had so suddenly been bared to her gaze. She saw it all now—or nearly all—that skeleton which they kept so closely locked away, and she marvelled at her blindness. To have lived among them, and to have seen so little!

The gentle white-haired mother with her patient silence—the chattering girls darkly hinting yet never revealing—the sombre prematurely-aged man who ruled them all, grinding the stones for bread, bitterly trampling all his ambitions underfoot, refusing to eat of the tree of life lest he should fail in that to which he had set his hand! And little Ruth—little Ruth—who had lived and died among them in her innocence—the child whom none had wanted but all had loved,—the child whose passing had wrung those terrible tears from the man who had never seemed to care!

Yes, she held the key to it all—that agony of despair, that extremity of suffering. The Bishop’s question: “You are sure it was an accident?” The old man’s halting enquiries—his relief at her reply—and then later his wandering words that had awakened such horror within her! His three-fold vow! What had he meant by that? And the place of sacrifice—the place of sacrifice! Again she seemed to hear the mumbled words. And her mind, leaping from point to point, caught detail after detail in a stronger light.

Now the picture of that terrible night stood out vividly before her. That shot in the moonlight, and her own conviction of tragedy! The coming of little Ruth to her deliverance—the banging of the door! Only Grandpa! The child’s words rushed back upon her. Only Grandpa! He had come in after those shots, had gone to the kitchen. How she remembered his weary, dragging gait! And she had fled—and she had fled! Again little Ruth’s words came back to her: “Oh, please come!” Ah, why had she not stayed with Ruth that night?

And the child had set out to seek her. Possibly she had gone to the old man first to see if she had returned to the kitchen, and not finding her, had hastened out to the Stones to search.

She tried to turn her imagination at this point, but a power stronger than herself urged it on. She saw the child flitting like a spirit through the night, over the lawn and through the nut-trees, pausing often to listen, but always flitting on again. She saw a dark shadow that followed, avoiding the open spaces, but never pausing at all. And she remembered the eyes that once had glared at her through those nut-trees and she had deemed them a dream!

Now she saw Ruth again out in the corn-field, hastening over the stubble, drawing near to the Stones—that place where the giant harebells grew. And the Stones themselves rose up before her, stark in the moonlight, and the great Rocking Stone which a child could set in motion from below but which none might overthrow. And the flitting form was climbing it to find her—ah, why had she left little Ruth that night?

The place of sacrifice! The place of sacrifice! The words ran with a mocking rhythm through her brain. She saw it all—the childish figure poised in the moonlight—the lurking shadow behind—a movement at first imperceptible, gathering in weight and strength as the great Stone swayed forward—and perhaps a faint cry. ... She covered her eyes to blot out the dreadful vision. Ah, little Ruth! Little Ruth!

When she looked up again, it had passed. Yet for a space her mind dwelt upon the old man and his helplessness—his pathetic dignity—his loneliness. And the mother with the eyes that were too tired to weep! She could understand it all now. Piece by piece the puzzle came together. She did not wonder any longer at the devotion that had inspired them all to sacrifice. They had done it for the mother’s sake. Ah, yes, she could understand!

She reached the yew-tree by the lake where she and Montague had hidden together and stood still. The dark boughs hanging down screened the further side from her view, but the small fizz of a cigarette-end meeting the water awakened her very swiftly from her reverie. She drew herself together with an instinctive summoning of her strength to meet him.

But when he came round the great tree and joined her, she knew no fear, only a sense of the inevitableness of the interview.

He spoke at once, without greeting of any sort. “I’ve been waiting for you. You’ve seen the Bishop?”

“Yes,” she made answer. “He has been—very good to me.”

“I can hardly imagine that,” said Rotherby dryly. “But he means well. Look here! I don’t know whether you’ll be angry, but I’ve told him everything. It was the only thing to do.”

She stood before him with grave eyes meeting his. “Why should I be angry?” she said. “I think it was—rather brave of you.”

“Brave!” he echoed, and his lips twisted a little as though they wanted to sneer. “Would you say that of the cur that takes refuge behind your skirt? No, wait! I’m not here to torment you with that sort of platitudes. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I don’t count. You’ll never see me again after this show is over. I promise you that. I’ve led you a devil’s dance, but I’m nearly done. There’s only one figure left, and you’ve got to step that whether you want to or not.”

“What do you mean?” Frances said, arrested rather by the recklessness of his speech than by the words he spoke.

“I’ll tell you,” said Rotherby. “It’ll be something of a shock, I warn you. But you have pluck enough for a dozen. First then, I’ve got to own up to a lie. You remember that affair at Tetherstones—when I was shot waiting for you?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Yes.” She knew what was coming, yet she waited for it with an odd breathlessness. Somehow so much seemed to hang upon it.

“It was not Arthur Dermot who fired that shot,” Rotherby said. “It was the old man, and he meant murder too. But Arthur and Oliver were both there and that put him off. They turned up unexpectedly from different directions and chased him, but somehow he got away. I bolted—with my usual bravery.” Again she saw his twisted smile. He went on, scarcely pausing. “I didn’t tell you the truth for several reasons. I daresay you can guess what they were. Arthur is sane enough except when he sees red. But the old man—well, the old man is a raving lunatic at times, though he has his lucid intervals, I believe. He ought to be shut up of course, but his wife has never been able to face it. Some women are like that. You would be. They keep him shut up when he goes off the rails. I believe he has only got one serious mania, and that is to kill me. So it has been fairly easy to guard against that until lately. It was poor Nan’s trouble that sent him off his head in the first place, but if I had kept out of the way he would probably have remained harmless. You understand that, do you?”

“I am beginning to understand—many things,” Frances said. But she could not speak of little Ruth to him.

He also seemed glad to pass on. “Well we needn’t discuss that any further. He got wind of my coming, and he did his best to out me. He didn’t succeed—perhaps fortunately, perhaps otherwise. Now to come to Arthur! He would have left me alone if it hadn’t been for you. You realize that, of course?”

“Oh yes,” Frances said, wondering with a faint impatience why he harped upon the matter.

He saw the wonder and grimly smiled at it. “I realized that too,” he said. “It has simplified matters considerably. I told you I would play the game. Well, I’ve played it. After I had got down here yesterday and seen the Bishop, I wrote to Arthur. I told him the whole truth from beginning to end. He hasn’t any illusions left by this time concerning you—or me either.”

“Ah, what made you do that?” Frances said.

Strangely in that moment, deeply as his words concerned her, it was not of herself she thought, but of the man before her, with his drawn, haggard face in which cynicism struggled to veil suffering.

“I don’t know why you did that,” she said. “It was not necessary. It was not wise.”

“It was—fair play,” he said, and still with set lips he smiled. “I did more than that, and I shall do more still—unless you relieve me of the obligation.”

“What do you mean?” she said. “What can you mean?”

A growing sense of uneasiness possessed her. Did he know Arthur Dermot’s nature? Was it not madness to dare again that tornado of fury from which she had so strenuously fought to deliver him? It had not been an easy thing, that deliverance. She had sacrificed everything to accomplish it, and now he had refuted all. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “Tell me what you mean!”

The bitter lines deepened about his mouth. “I will tell you,” he said, “and once more seek the refuge of your generous protection. I told him that I should go to-day to Fordestown, and from Fordestown I would meet him at the Stones at any hour that he cared to appoint, to give him such further satisfaction as he might wish to demand.”

“Montague!” The name broke from her, little accustomed as she was to utter it. “Are you really mad?” she said. “Are you quite, quite mad?”

“I am not,” he answered briefly.

“But—but he will kill you if you meet again!”

She gasped the words breathlessly. This thing must be stopped. At all costs it must be stopped.

He was still smiling in that odd, drawn way. She did not understand his look. He raised his shoulders at her words.

“He may. What of it?”

“Oh, you mustn’t go!” she said. “It would be madness—madness.”

“I have had my answer,” said Rotherby.

“You have?” She stared at him. “What is it? Quick! Tell me!”

He pulled a telegram from his pocket and gave it to her. She opened it with shaking hands. Three words only—brief, characteristic, uncompromising! “To-night at ten.” No signature of any sort—only the bald reply!

She gazed at it in silence. And before her inward sight there rose a vision of the man himself as she had seen him last, terrible in his wrath, overwhelming in his condemnation. Yet her heart leapt to the vision. He was the man she loved.

She looked up. “You mustn’t go,” she said. “Or if you do—I shall come too.”

“No,” said Rotherby.

She met his look. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”

“I mean that you will never go anywhere with me again,” he said.

“But—but—” she stumbled over the words, hearing other words ringing like hammer-strokes in her brain,—“he will kill you—he has sworn to kill you if you go his way again.”

“Do you think you could prevent it,” said Rotherby.

She crumpled the paper in her hand. “Yes, I could—I would—somehow.”

“Very well. You can,” he said.

His manner baffled her. She looked at him uncertainly. “Tell me what you mean!” she said again.

He made a curious gesture, as of a player who tosses down his last card knowing himself a loser. “I mean,” he said, “that you can go in my place. Either that—or I go alone.”

Then she understood him, read the strategy by which he had sought to prove himself, and a deep pity surged up within her, blotting out all that had gone before.

“But I couldn’t possibly go,” she said. “It wouldn’t really help either, though—” she halted a little—“I know quite well what made you do it—and—I am grateful.”

“One of us will go,” Rotherby said with decision. “That I swear to God. It is for you to decide which.”

There was indomitable resolution in his voice. Very suddenly she realized that the way before her was barred. She drew back instinctively.

“But that is absurd,” she said. “You know quite well that there is nothing to be gained by going.”

“Except a modicum of self-respect,” said Rotherby. “It may not be worth much, but, strange to say, I value it. I will forego it for your sake, but for no other consideration under the sun.”

He was immovable; she saw it. Yet in despair she made another effort to move him. “But how could I go?” she protested. “It is utterly out of the question. You know it is out of the question.”

“Do I know it?” said Rotherby, with his faint half-scoffing smile.

“If you think at all, you must,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly face it. Not after—after——”

“After he has been told the truth in such a fashion that he cannot possibly doubt you,” said Rotherby. “Forgive me, but I thought—love—was capable of anything. If it isn’t, well—as I said before—I go alone. That is quite final, so we needn’t argue about it. There is a train to Fordestown at five this afternoon. I shall go by that, and pick up a conveyance at the station.”

“There are none,” she said, clutching at a straw.

“Then I shall go to The Man in the Moon for one. Anyway, I shall keep my appointment—with time to spare,” said Rotherby. “You might give us a thought before you turn in. It’ll be an interesting interview—even more so than our last.”

He swung upon his heel with the words, but Frances threw out a hand, grasping his arm.

“Montague,—please—you’re not in earnest! You can’t be! I mean—it’s so utterly preposterous.”

He stood still, the smile gone from his face. Very suddenly he threw aside the cloak of irony in which he had wrapped himself, and met her appeal with absolute sincerity.

“I am in earnest,” he said. “And it is not preposterous. Can’t you realize that a time may come in a man’s life when just for his own soul’s sake he has got to prove to himself that he is not an utter skunk? It doesn’t matter what other people think. They can think what they damn’ well please. But he himself—the thing that goes with him always, that sleeps when he sleeps and wakes when he wakes—do you think he can afford to be out with that? By God, no! Life isn’t worth having under those conditions. I’d sooner die and be damned straight away.”

He laughed upon the words, but it was a laugh of exceeding bitterness. And there came to Frances in that moment the conviction that what he said was right. No power on earth can ever compensate for the loss of self-respect.

Somehow that passionate utterance of his went straight to her heart. If she had not forgiven him before, her forgiveness was now complete and generous. She saw in him in the hour of his repentance the man whom once she could have loved, and she was deeply moved thereby.

“Are you satisfied?” he said. “Have I convinced you that I am playing the game—or trying to?”

She met his eyes though she knew that her own were wet. “Yes, I am convinced,” she said. “I am satisfied.”

“And what are you going to do?” he questioned.

Very simply she made answer. “I will go to Tetherstones.”

He drew a hard breath. “You’re not afraid?”

“No,” she said.

He put an urgent hand on her shoulder. “Frances,” he said, “you must make him understand.”

“He will understand,” she said.

He bent towards her. His voice came huskily. “It isn’t only—for myself,” he said. “You know that?”

“I know,” she said.

“I want to win your forgiveness,” he said, and there was appeal in the pressure of his hand. “Have I got that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You are sure?” Voice and touch alike pleaded with her.

She felt the tears welling to her eyes. “From my very heart,” she said. “Yes, I am sure.”

She offered him both her hands, and he took and held them closely for a space, then abruptly he let them go.

“You will never love me,” he said, “but it may please you some day to remember that you taught me how to love.”

And with that he turned and walked away from her, not suffering himself to look back. She knew even as she watched him go that he would keep his word and that she would never see him again.

Out of sheer pity it came to her to call him back, but a stronger impulse held her silent. She became aware very suddenly of the crumpled paper in her hand, and, as the solitude of the place came about her with his going, she spread it open once again and read.