something, of a woman's heart. He had never known it before, because he
had been so false himself. He might have been evil and had a conscience
too; then he would have been wise. But he had been evil, and had had no
conscience or moral mentor from the beginning; so he had never known
anything real in his life. He thought he had known Christine, but now he
saw her in a new light, through the eyes of her sister from whose heart
he had gathered a harvest of passion and affection, and had burnt the
stubble and seared the soil forever. Sophie could never justify herself
in the eyes of her husband, or in her own eyes, because this man did not
love her. Even as he stood before her there, declaring himself to her as
wilfully wicked in all that he had said and done, she still longed
passionately for the thing that was denied her: not her lost truth back,
but the love that would have compensated for her suffering, and in some
poor sense have justified her in years to come. She did not put it into
words, but the thought was bluntly in her mind. She looked at him, and
her eyes filled with tears, which dropped down her cheek to the ground.

He was about to answer her question, when, all at once, her honest eyes
looked into his mournfully, and she said with an incredible pathos and
simplicity:

"I don't know how I am going to live on with Magon. I suppose I'll have
to keep pretending till I die!"

The bell in the church was ringing for vespers. It sounded peaceful and
quiet, as though no war, or rebellion, or misery and shame, were anywhere
within the radius of its travel.

Just where they stood there was a tall calvary. Behind it was some
shrubbery. Ferrol was going to answer her, when he saw, coming along the