good thing, speaking
generally, but in the individual case it is terribly hard. Would you have his
widow keep silence? That would be the easier thing to do, be sure of it - for
her, a thousand times the easier. I regard her as the one entirely noble woman
it has been my lot to know. And if you thought calmly you could not speak of her
with such impatience.«
    Hubert kept silence for a moment.
    »It is all true. Of course it only means that I am savagely jealous. But I
cannot - upon my life I cannot - understand her having given her love to such a
man as that!«
    Mr. Wyvern seemed to regard the landscape. There was a sad smile on his
countenance.
    »Let there be an end of it,« Hubert resumed. »I didn't mean to say anything
to you about the letter. Now, we'll talk of other things. Well, I am going to
have a summer among the German galleries; perhaps I shall find peace there. You
have let your son know that I am coming?«
    The vicar nodded. They continued their walk along the top of the hill.
Presently Mr. Wyvern stopped and faced his companion.
    »Are you serious in what you said just now? I mean about her love for
Mutimer?«
    »Serious? Of course I am. Why should you ask such a question?«
    »Because I find it difficult to distinguish between the things a young man
says in jealous pique and the real belief he entertains when he is not throwing
savage words about. You have convinced yourself that she loved her husband in
the true sense of the word?«
    »The conviction was forced upon me. Why did she marry him at all? What led
her to give herself, heart and soul, to Socialism, she who under ordinary
circumstances would have shrunk from that and all other isms? Why should she
make it a special entreaty to me to pursue her husband's work? The zeal for his
memory is nothing unanticipated; it issues naturally from her former state of
mind.«
    »Your vehemence,« replied the vicar, smiling, »is sufficient proof that you
don't think it impossible for all these questions to be answered in another
sense. I can't pretend to have read the facts of her life infallibly, but
suppose I venture a hint or two, just to give you matter for thought. Why she
married him I cannot wholly explain to myself, but remember that she took that
step very shortly after