Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/333

328 If this man has been evil either in heart or conduct I must know it."

The hour of Westgate's temptation had come. Against her peremptory demand, against his own fierce desire to justify himself in the eyes of the woman whom he loved, arose the gentleman's instinct to speak no evil of another, to hold sacred the knowledge with which the rector had frankly intrusted him. And yet—could any time be more opportune, could any occasion be more appropriate than this to smash the idol which this woman had been worshiping to her own destruction? He looked into her eyes and was silent. They had reached the foot of the steps leading up to her door. She turned, grasped an ornament carved into the stone of the newel-post and faced him insistently.

"Philip! Speak to me. Tell me what you know."

"I will not tell you, Ruth."

"Why not?"

"Because I respect myself, and I love you."

"You love me, and yet you come to me with the defaming gossip of the town, and when I ask you for facts that I may defend myself, you will not give them to me. You have entered into a conspiracy with him and his wife to wreck my peace of mind, and I shall end by hating all three of you."

She swept up the steps to her door; but when she reached it, some sudden wave of contrition, some dim realization of his manly self-restraint, entered her heart, and she turned and called him back, for he had already started away. She hurried down to meet him, and held out her hand, and he grasped it in both of his.

"Philip," she said, "forgive me! Such dreadful things have happened to-day that I am beside myself. Do not remember what I have said. Remember only that I—am grateful—to you."

Through the thick folds of her veil he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He lifted her hand to his