w her mind. She was always, he remembered, a creature of
caprice. If she were really in earnest!

"We have drifted too far apart, Blanche," he said, making an effort to
face the situation. "Years ago this might have been possible. To-day it
would be a dismal failure. My ways are not yours. The life I lead would
bore you to death."

"There is no reason why you should not alter it," she answered, calmly.
"In fact, I should wish you to. Blakely all the year round would be an
impossibility. You could come and live in London."

He looked at her fixedly.

"Have you forgotten?" he asked.

She covered her face with her hands for a moment. If indeed she really
felt any emotion it passed quickly away, for when she looked up again
there were no traces left.

"I have forgotten nothing," she declared, defiantly. "Only the horror and
fear of it all has passed away. I don't see why I should suffer all my
life. In fact, I don't mean to. I don't want to be a miserable, lonely
old woman. I want a home, something different from this."

Mannering faced her gravely.

"Blanche," he said, "you are proposing something which would most surely
ruin the rest of our lives. What we might have been to one another if
things had been different it is hard to say. But this much is very
certain. We belong now to different worlds. We have drifted apart with
the years. Even the little we see of one another now is far from a
pleasure to either of us. What you are suggesting would be simply
suicidal."

She was silent. He watched her anxiously. As a rule her face was easy
enough to read. To-day it was impenetrable. He could not tell what was
passing behind that still, almost stony, look. Her silence forced him
again into speech.

"You agree with me, surely, Blanche? You must agree with me?"

She raised her head.

"I am not sure that I do," she answered. "But at least I understand you.
That is something! You want to go on as you are--apart from me. That is
true, isn't it?"

"Yes!"

She nodded.

"At least you are candid. You want your liberty--unfettered. What are you
willing to pay for it?"

He looked at her incredulously.

"I do not quite understand!" he said.

She laughed, and the laugh belonged to her old self.

"Indeed! I thought that I was explicit enough, brutally explicit, even.
What have you to offer me in place of your name and yourself? What
sacrifice are you prepared to make?"

He looked at her furtively, as though even t