You know, old man, Nance was troubled.

I could see that." His brother was now pacing the floor, his head bent from the beautifully squared shoulders, his face the face of a mind working busily.
"An idiot I was--she didn't know me--I had only to--" Bernal interrupted.
"Are you talking to yourself, or to me ?" The rector of St.Antipas turned at one end of his walk.
"To both of us, brother.

I tell you there has been nothing between us--never anything except the most flawless idealism.

I admit that at the moment Nancy observed us the circumstances were unluckily such that an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might have misconstrued them.

I will even admit that a woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments might not unreasonably have been puzzled, but I would tear my heart open to the world this minute--'Oh, be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny!'" "If I follow you, old chap, Nancy observed some scene this afternoon in which it occurred to her that I might have been an actor." There was quick pain, a sinking in his heart.
"She had reason to know it was one of us--and if I had denied it was I--" "I _see_--why didn't you ?" "I thought she must surely have seen me--and besides"-- his voice softened with affection--"do you think, old chap, I would have shifted a misunderstanding like that on to _your_ shoulders.