"You gave him to me voluntarily."
"Yes. I gave him to you voluntarily. And therein lies your victory. If the case had been brought to issue and decided against me there would have been excuse for my defeat. As it is, I have simply been beaten—by a woman. And the Almighty."
"It is hard to fight against the Almighty."
"Yes. And as hard, I find, to fight against a woman in the right. Perhaps the two mean the same thing. I rather think they do."
Then a tinge of bitterness came into his voice. "Of course the world—your world and mine—will have pleasant things to say about this latest chapter in the scandal of De Jarnette vs. De Jarnette. The natural inference, brutally stated, will be that I gave him up when I found that I might have a blind child on my hands. I couldn't expect them to say otherwise. The world judges by appearances and appearances are certainly against me. Well! I don't care much about what it thinks. The world and I have never been on very good terms. I have hated it and it has hated me ... I am more concerned about what—"
His eyes with their dumb pleading finished the sentence and she answered them.
"You know I do not think it," she said. "I have thought hard and bitter things about you—and with cause—but not that. I have never for one moment thought that."
He took a step across the arbor with outstretched hand, grasping the one she gave him as man grasps the hand of man. Then dropping it he went back to his place opposite her.
"You have a right to think hard things about me," he said. "I have been hard. I never intended to let my heart soften to you. I meant to hold out to the last. But,—"
She broke the silence that fell upon them then by saying: