"Stop," Candish interrupted. "First you have to think of her."
Philip stared in silence. It came over him how entirely he had been thinking of himself, and how little he had considered Mrs. Fenton in his reflections upon the events of the previous evening. Here was a man who could love her so well as to think of her first and himself last.
"But I have given her up," Philip stammered.
There was nothing bitter or sneering in the words; they were said simply and dispassionately.
"No," Philip answered, dropping his voice; "she was not mine."
The older man rose and walked to the fire, where he stood looking down at the flaming coals.
"After all," he said, "we are pretty much in the same plight. I knew her when her husband brought her here a bride, the loveliest creature alive. Arthur Fenton was a clever, selfish, wholly irreligious man; and I could not help seeing how completely he failed to understand or appreciate his wife. She was kind to me, and when her trouble came she turned to me for comfort and sympathy. It is my weakness that I love her; but she will never know it."
"And does she love nobody?" demanded Ashe jealously.
Candish turned upon him a look of rebuke.
"What right have you or I to ask that question?" he retorted sternly. "I do penance for loving her, and God is my witness how carefully I have hidden it. It is not for me to question her right to love if she please."
Philip rose, and went to the other, holding out his hand.
"Mr. Candish," said he earnestly, "you have taught me my lesson. I have been a weak fool, and worse. I will pray for strength to lay my passion on the altar and forget it."
The rector took the extended hand, looking into Philip's eyes with a glance so wistful, so humble, and so tender that the remembrance went with Ashe long.
"And forget it?" he repeated. "I do not know that I could do that!"
He dropped the hand of Ashe, and shook himself as if he would shake off the mood which had taken possession of him.
"Come," he declared resolutely, "this will not do. This is not the sort of mood that makes men. Let me give you a single piece of advice,--I am older, you know; don't pity yourself, whatever else you do. In the first place, that would be equivalent to saying that Providence doesn't know what is best for you; and in the second, it spoils all one's sense of values."