"Look here, Denis, I know very well I ought to have owned up. I knew it at the time, but I was too beastly scared!—and that's the plain truth. It was the idea of prison; for the moment it knocked all the stuffing out of me—you needn't think I admire myself. And to drag you into it as well—oh, it was a rotten business!"
"You didn't drag me, I dragged myself," said Denis quickly. "If anybiddy was to blame, it was I."
"You! You'll be telling me you killed him next. No, it's my own funeral—and I've been such a concentrated ass over it, that's what gets me! If I'd told the truth at once, there would have been practically no bother, I'm certain of it. I could have done it then; afterwards, at the inquest, when I wanted to, it was too late. I couldn't tell the tale without its point; and I couldn't tell that particular point when that unhappy little thing had lost both her husband and her kid. No, I don't consider myself to shine in this affair, either in morals or intelligence."
"It was I began it," said Denis obstinately.
Gardiner shrugged his shoulders; what was the use of contradiction? Denis was mending a fly; and by the happy clearing of his face it was plain that he was also busy mending his ideal and setting it back on its pedestal with an added glory. There is no surer way of earning a man's esteem than by begging his pardon. All Gardiner's faults were hidden under this new coat of gilding. "You're an incurable idealist, my good Denis," he said to himself, watching the process of rehabilitation. "You idealize me on the one hand, and that inoffensive but very ordinary little cousin of yours on the other. Lord send you never find us out, for you'll break your knees badly when you do!" The undeserved good opinion of a friend makes a thorny bed. Yet, though Gardiner did not see it, he was moving towards the fulfillment of his friend's conception of his character. That is the worst of idealists—they shame us into acting up to their ideas!
Denis was a devout fisherman. As soon as he had finished the fly he started off again, wading round the bend out of sight. Gardiner, who fished only because any sport was better than none, stayed where he was. Minutes passed. He was nearly asleep when some one hailed him. At first he thought it was Denis, and took no notice; but the voice becoming insistent, he opened one eye, and immediately sprang up. It was Miss O'Connor, on the other side of the river.
She made a trumpet of her hands and shouted some question, but the Semois drowned her words. Gardiner was wearing the orthodox Ardennes waders, which begin as boots and continue as shiny waterproof breeches right up to the waist, so it was nothing for him to splash across to the farther shore. (It may be mentioned that Denis stuck obstinately to his English boots, which came scarcely higher than his knee; with the result that he got very wet, for the Semois came considerably higher than his knee.)
Dorothea was wearing a short tweed skirt with leather buttons; square-toed, solid brown brogues; a white shirt, a tan belt, and a brown tie to match. She was hatless, and her hair, smooth, parted, and rippling over her ears, was glossy as a Frenchwoman's. Her face, which had lost its fragility, was softly, evenly brown; her lips, a veritable cupid's bow, were cherry-red. They were drawn straight as she looked at Gardiner, and her manner was distant.
"I took you for a woodcutter, or I should not have disturbed you," she said. "I wished to ask if there is a way back along the river."
"Well, there is," said Gardiner, looking down at the ruts under their feet, "and you're on it. If you follow this track, it will bring you straight to Rochehaut."