Mrs Greville looked a little anxiously into his face, and the hard, blue eyes looked back unflinchingly, but as he walked swiftly in the direction of the Gym Ground, alone and with his mask off, his face showed signs of strain.

The night under a rising moon was clear as crystal, and he had no difficulty in descrying Diane’s figure across the course where he and she since their engagement was announced (escaping for a little while from an army of friends) often walked in the evenings. Some of their dearest moments had been passed sitting where she now sat on the pile of heavy timber by the Grand Stand.

Boston, arrived before his master, sprawled at Diane’s feet, and she was gazing before her at the moonlight coming up in waves from the horizon, flooding all the land with cold silver light. Something colder than the moonlight gripped the man’s heart for a moment, but he held out his hands to her and spoke her name as though he had nothing to fear. She stood up quickly and put out her hands too—​but with a difference; in her gesture there was a subtle suggestion of defence, of warding off something—​and when he would have taken them in his, she drew back.

"No, Marie—​not yet—​there is something you must tell me--"

He stared at her. She was deadly pale, but the moon itself was not more composed, and her eyes had the same steady glance as his own. Her question was spoken in a very low voice.

"Were you ever in love with—​another man’s wife?"

His face darkened. Prepared as he was, the unexpected form of her question took him unawares. He had anticipated something to which he could give a firm, clear denial—​but to this, what could he say, who had so much on his conscience!

"You …​ listening to scandal, Diane!" he said at last, and the reproach in his voice reached home. She faltered a moment, not answering at once, and they stood looking at each other, less like lovers than two duellists measuring each other’s strength.

"I will believe anything you tell me, Marie," she said gently, at last; "I ask nothing better than to hear that it is only scandal."

He could not afford to hesitate any longer.

"If you are referring to my friendship with Mrs de Rivas, I may say that in that at least I am innocent. Her husband neglected her; I was sorry for her; our so-called friendship was a concerted plan to bring him to his senses, and it worked like magic. They are now extremely happy."

But he had waked something new in Diane Heywood; she looked into his eyes with the cold curiosity of a child.

"Why should your friendship be so terrible a thing for a woman? Why should it bring a man to his senses?"

"Oh, dearest! for God’s sake, don’t ask questions the answers to which will only hurt you?"

"But I must know, Maryon," she said proudly. "I have never lived amongst lies and shadows. Everything must be clear and clean about me. If you are innocent in this matter—​of what is it then that you are guilty?"

The mad longing of the unshriven soul for confession swept over him then. He too would have all clear and clean about him, for once and all, cost what it might.

"Oh, just of being a blackguard," he said, and all the pent-up bitterness, and self-mockery and self-loathing of years came out in the low-spoken words. "Just of being a scoundrel and a coward as far as women are concerned—​of robbing, looting—​taking all and giving nothing in return—​playing pirate and cut-throat in the great game of love, careless of what anyone suffered."

"You!" she whispered. "You whom I have looked upon as a knight of chivalry—​a Galahad—​all that was fine and noble!"

"Oh! Diane, I have never pretended to be any of these things—​never wanted you to believe it—​I am only common earth—​common or garden earth. But such as I am, I love you—​I ask you to take me with all my sins."

There was a long silence.

"But why, Maryon?--What changed you from the man God meant you to be, to this?"

She loved him. For all her wounded pride and anger and horror, for all his black sins, she loved him, as women will love through everything, in spite of everything; and she longed for some word of extenuation that would justify the forgiveness she could not withhold.

"I loved a woman years ago, and she was faithless. She left me for another man. My wife ran away with my best friend."

"Your wife?"

"Yes. Oh, I meant to tell you everything before you married me, Diane-- only, I was putting it off as long as possible. I left America because of that, and came out to this country. Then, one day, after many years, I found myself up here living next door to the very man and woman who had been false to me—​for whose sake I had been divorced in America so that they might marry and be happy."