He locks his teeth together hard. For how much longer can he bear this? There comes over him a rushing temptation to try to buy one soft look from her to take with him, by the hypocrisy of asking her forgiveness; he whose whole smitten soul stands up in protest against the need of any forgiveness.
But no. Sooner than descend to such an equivocation he will depart on his lonely way uncomforted.
'I must go,' he says steadily, though his lips are livid. 'Will you—would you mind shaking hands with me?'
He is going. She had known what the wheels meant, and yet there seems a murderous novelty in the idea. She has put her death-cold hand into his; speech is almost beyond her; but she mutters some poor syllables about not wishing him ill.
'Peggy,' he says, with a solemnity such as that of those who are spending their last breath in some sacred utterance; 'Peggy, you are wrong! Any one to whom you told your story—any one who had to judge between you and me, would say that you were right; but you—are—wrong! If I have killed your heart, you have killed mine, so we are quits. Good-bye!'
The next moment she is alone in the room.
CHAPTER XXX
The Whitsun garlands that had so gaily wound about the pillars of Roupell Church have long ago been taken down, dead and faded. Poor Peggy has once again stood all day on her ladder, and decked aisle and chancel and font and altar with the manifold roses and the May lilies that by Trinity Sunday are bountifully ready to her hand. Once again has Mrs. Evans sat in a pew and helped her with moral suasion, and with easy suggestions of alterations that would entail her undoing half her work.