than now, in her straight black dress, with that smoky cloud of hair framing her white face.
She went out, after a while, wrapped in a black cape which had been her mother's. She wore no hat. In spite of the wind, the air was warm.
Crispin said, as they walked along, "You are beautiful in black."
"They didn't want me to wear it," she told him passionately. "I should have died if I hadn't."
He said he knew how she felt. They were drawn together by his comprehension of her mood. As they passed the garden, he stopped and found a late white rose blooming. She pinned it on her cape. He thought it completed, perfectly, the effect of sorrowing beauty.
As they came to the road, he asked, "Where shall we go?"
"I don't care. Only let it be as far away from people as possible. I have something to tell you—I want to tell you before I talk it over with any one else."
He was touched by her confidence in him, and laid his hand, for a moment, on her arm. He rarely touched her. She was too fine, he felt, for that.
Yet it was not alone her fineness which held him back. It was his own. He belonged to the village and had gone to school with Hildegarde. His father was judge of the county court, and much respected for a certain hearty sense of justice, which made him understand the sinner, but not sentimentalize about his sin.
Crispin was like his father in looks and in his attitude of mind. He was a strong, upstanding fellow. His hair was thick and fair, and gilded by a touch of
