Clear and cuttingly keen as they are, Roger's eyes do not read my soul aright.
"Are _you_, Nancy ?" "If _you_ are, I am," I reply, with a half-smothered sob.
He makes no rejoinder, and we begin again to walk along homeward, but slowly this time.
"We have made a mistake, perhaps," he says, presently, still speaking with the same slow and ruminating sadness in his tone.

"The inscrutable God alone knows why He permits his creatures to mar all their seventy years by one short false step--yes--a _mistake_!" (Ah me! ah me! I always mistrusted those laurestines! They sent me back my brother churlish and embittered, but oh! that in my steadfast Roger they should have worked such a sudden deadly change!) "Is it more a mistake," I cry, bursting out into irrepressible anger, "than it was two hours ago, when I left you at that gate?
You did not seem to think it a mistake _then_--at least you hid it very well, if you did"-- (then going on quickly, seeing that he is about to interrupt me)--"have you been _comparing notes_, pray?
Has _she_ found it a mistake, too ?" "Yes, _that_ she has! Poor soul! God help her!" he answers, compassionately.
Something in the pity of his tone jars frightfully on my strung nerves.
"If God has to help all the poor souls who have made mistakes, He will have his hands full!" I retort, bitterly.
Another silence.

We are drawing near the pleasure-grounds--the great rhododendron belt that shelters the shrubbery from the east wind.
"Nancy," says Roger, again stopping, and facing me too.

This time he does not put his hands on my shoulders; the melancholy is still in his eyes, but there is no longer any harshness.

They repossess their natural kindly benignity.