'Was it,' she asks with a quietness that makes his hopes sink lower than would any noisy tears or tantrums, 'was it by accident that she was in your arms?'
He is silent. In point of fact, he is as innocent of that embrace as Peggy herself; but from telling her so he is, being a man and an Englishman, for ever debarred. He must stand there, and bear the consequences of that supposed guilt, whatever those consequences may be. There is a little stillness while he waits his sentence—a little stillness broken only by the eight-day clock's tick-tack, and by the distance-mellowed sounds of the village rising to go about its daily work.
'Have you nothing to say for yourself, then?' she asks at last, in a voice which she dares not raise above a whisper for fear of its betraying her by altogether breaking down—'no explanation to give?'
'I tell you that it was all an accident,' he repeats, with a doggedness born of his despair. 'I can give no other explanation.'
'And that is none,' she replies, a wave of indignation sending back the colour to her ashy cheeks, and steadying her shaking limbs as she again turns to leave the room.
He does not, as before, throw himself in her way; he remains standing where he is, and only says in a dull voice:
'Are you going?'
'Why should I stay?'
'Going without saying good-bye?'
'I will say good-bye if you wish.'