g not to have found out that beyond everything in the
world you cared for him. Some day or other we should have failed, each
one in turn. I dared not fail, nor dared you. I could not let you, who
had said 'Two lives must not be spoilt because of me,' live through a
year thinking that two lives had been spoilt. You on your side dared not
let me, who had said 'Marriage between a blind man and a woman is only
possible when there is more than friendship on both sides,' know that
upon one side there was only friendship, and we were so near to failing.
So I went away."

"You did not fail," said Ethne, quietly; "it was only I who failed."

She blamed herself most bitterly. She had set herself, as the one thing
worth doing, and incumbent on her to do, to guard this man from
knowledge which would set the crown on his calamities, and she had
failed. He had set himself to protect her from the comprehension that
she had failed, and he had succeeded. It was not any mere sense of
humiliation, due to the fact that the man whom she had thought to
hoodwink had hoodwinked her, which troubled her. But she felt that she
ought to have succeeded, since by failure she had robbed him of his last
chance of happiness. There lay the sting for her.

"But it was not your fault," he said. "Once or twice, as I said, you
were off your guard, but the convincing facts were not revealed to me in
that way. When you played the Musoline Overture before, on the night of
the day when Willoughby brought you such good news, I took to myself
that happiness of yours which inspired your playing. You must not blame
yourself. On the contrary, you should be glad that I have found out."

"Glad!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, for my sake, glad." And as she looked at him in wonderment he went
on: "Two lives should not be spoilt because of you. Had you had your
way, had I not found out, not two but three lives would have been spoilt
because of you--because of your loyalty."

"Three?"

"Yours. Yes--yes, yours, Feversham's, and mine. It was hard enough to
keep the pretence during the few weeks we were in Devonshire. Own to it,
Ethne! When I went to London to see my oculist it was a relief; it gave
you a pause, a rest wherein to drop pretence and be yourself. It could
not have lasted long even in Devonshire. But what when we came to live
under the same roof, and there were no visits to the oculist, when we
saw each other every hour of every day? Sooner or later the truth mus