One day she asked him: "You know about me, I suppose?" Miltoun made a
motion of his head, signifying that he did. His informant had been the
vicar.
"Yes, I am told, her story is a sad one--a divorce."
"Do you mean that she has been divorced, or----"
For the fraction of a second the vicar perhaps had hesitated.
"Oh! no--no. Sinned against, I am sure. A nice woman, so far as I have
seen; though I'm afraid not one of my congregation."
With this, Miltoun, in whom chivalry had already been awakened, was
content. When she asked if he knew her story, he would not for the world
have had her rake up what was painful. Whatever that story, she could
not have been to blame. She had begun already to be shaped by his own
spirit; had become not a human being as it was, but an expression of his
aspiration....
On the third evening after his passage of arms with Courtier, he was
again at her little white cottage sheltering within its high garden
walls. Smothered in roses, and with a black-brown thatch overhanging the
old-fashioned leaded panes of the upper windows, it had an air of hiding
from the world. Behind, as though on guard, two pine trees spread their
dark boughs over the outhouses, and in any south-west wind could be
heard speaking gravely about the weather. Tall lilac bushes flanked the
garden, and a huge lime-tree in the adjoining field sighed and rustled,
or on still days let forth the drowsy hum of countless small dusky bees
who frequented that green hostelry.
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