They had reached the end of the pear-tree shadows.

A few steps more would bring them to the fallen south wall of the garden and the open moonlight beyond, but to the right an olive alley of deeper shadow diverged.
"No," he said, with slow deliberation; "I have to thank Mary Rogers for having discovered something in me that I have been blindly, foolishly, and hopelessly struggling with." "And, pray, what was that ?" said Mrs.Peyton sharply.
"That I love you!" Mrs.Peyton was fairly startled.

The embarrassment of any truth is apt to be in its eternal abruptness, which no deviousness of tact or circumlocution of diplomacy has ever yet surmounted.

Whatever had been in her heart, or mind, she was unprepared for this directness.

The bolt had dropped from the sky; they were alone; there was nothing between the stars and the earth but herself and this man and this truth; it could not be overlooked, surmounted, or escaped from.