A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came sailing on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel's knee.

"I was angry at first," she said, her voice falling across the silence like another leaf. "And then, after a time, I forgave you. And later still, much later, I found out that you had never injured me—that I had nothing to forgive."

He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained volubly—for here he felt he was on sure ground—that, on the contrary, she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an infernal blackguard, that men were coarse brutes, not fit to kiss a good woman's shoe-latchet, etc., etc. He identified his conduct with that of the whole sex, without alluding to it as that of the individual Tristram. He made it clear that he did not claim to have behaved better than most men.

Rachel listened attentively. "And I actually loved him," she said to herself.

"But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her love raises a man, transfigures him, ennobles his whole life," etc., etc.

"My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at the time," said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were spoken.

Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last; was the reproach he had been expecting.

He assured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once more. He denounced the accursed morals of the day, above which he ought to have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all unmarried men.

"That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett," she said, scornfully, to herself, and then her cheek blanched as she remembered that Hugh was not exempt, after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient; but she waited quietly for the inevitable proposal.

Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic and facile utterance, which the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, had become so entangled in the morals of the age that it took him some time to extricate himself from the subject before he could pass on to plead, in an impassioned manner, the cause of the man, unworthy though he might be, who had long loved her, loved her now, and would always love her, in this world and the next.

It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had many. But if the proposal was long, the refusal was longer. Rachel, who had a good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic life made great demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have not seen them for a day or two.

Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at first impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him devotedly could not at last prevail against the odious conviction that she was determined not to marry him.