ent, staring at her, not so much in weakness as
in positive mental division. No, would be false; and Yes, not less false;
and if the step was irretrievable, to say Yes would be to plunge a dagger
in her bosom; but No was a vain deceit involving a double wreck.
Assuredly a man standing against the world in a good cause, with a
runaway wife on his hands, carries a burden, however precious it be to
him.

A smile of her lips, parted in an anguish of expectancy, went to death
over Renee's face. She looked at him tenderly. 'The truth,' she murmured
to herself, and her eyelids fell.

'I am ready to bear anything,' said Beauchamp. 'I weigh what you ask me,
that is all. You a burden to me? But when you ask me, you make me turn
round and inquire how we stand before the world.'

'The world does not stone men,' said Renee.

'Can't I make you feel that I am not thinking of myself?' Beauchamp
stamped in his extreme perplexity. He was gagged; he could not possibly
talk to her, who had cast the die, of his later notions of morality and
the world's dues, fees, and claims on us.

'No, friend, I am not complaining.' Renee put out her hand to him; with
compassionate irony feigning to have heard excuses. 'What right have I to
complain? I have not the sensation. I could not expect you to be
everlastingly the sentinel of love. Three times I rejected you! Now that
I have lost my father--Oh! poor father: I trifled with my lover, I
tricked him that my father might live in peace. He is dead. I wished you
to marry one of your own countrywomen, Nevil. You said it was impossible;
and I, with my snake at my heart, and a husband grateful for nursing and
whimpering to me for his youth like a beggar on the road, I thought I
owed you this debt of body and soul, to prove to you I have some courage;
and for myself, to reward myself for my long captivity and misery with
one year of life: and adieu to Roland my brother! adieu to friends! adieu
to France! Italy was our home. I dreamed of one year in Italy; I fancied
it might be two; more than that was unimaginable. Prisoners of long date
do not hope; they do not calculate: air, light, they say; to breathe
freely and drop down! They are reduced to the instincts of the beasts. I
thought I might give you happiness, pay part of my debt to you. Are you
remembering Count Henri? That paints what I was! I could fly to that for
a taste of life! a dance to death! And again you ask: Why, if I loved you
then, not tu