"My God," he cried, "she's like all the rest! I've been a fool--_me_,
of all men! Here I've been thinking she was to be for me and me alone.
This has been going on for God only knows how long. She has been
fooling me with her drooping lashes and flushed cheeks. I was ready to
marry her--fool, fool that I was. She might, for reasons of her own,
have married me. There is no knowing what a woman will do. Bah! What a
mollycoddle I have been! She, and he too, perhaps, have been laughing
at me for the blind idiot I am--_me_, the man who thought he knew all
there was to know about women."

Mostyn heard the front door open softly. It was just as softly closed,
and then the girl crossed the porch and advanced to the gate. She and
the man stood whispering for a moment, and then they passed out at the
gate and, side by side, went into the wood beyond the main road.

Filled with chagrin, to which an odd sort of despair clung like a
moist garment, Mostyn advanced along the fence to the gate and entered
the yard. Putting his rod and game-bag down, he seated himself on the
step of the porch. His blood seemed cold and clogged in his veins. He
could not adjust himself to the situation. He could not have met a
greater disappointment. The discovery had completely wrecked his
already strained faith in the purity of woman. He sat watching the
moon as the clouds shifted, now thinly, now thickly, before it. He
heard a step in the wood. Some one was coming. He started to rise and
flee the spot, but a dogged sort of resentment filled him. Why should
he let the matter disturb him? Why should he conceal from any one the
knowledge of her shame? He remained where he was. The step was louder,
firmer. It was Dolly, and she was now at the gate. He saw her, as with
head hung low, she put her hand on the latch. She opened the gate,
entered, and paused, her face toward the wood. There she stood, not