f Seymour knew what I have
done! If I told him, what would he think, what would he say?" He would
be pleased, no doubt. But would he be surprised? And while she listened
and talked she began to wonder, but always without intensity, about
that. Seymour would think she had done the inevitable thing, what
any thoroughbred was bound to do. And yet--would he be surprised
nevertheless that she had been able to do it? She began presently to
feel a slight tingle of curiosity about that. Had she, perhaps, to
a certain extent justified Seymour's fidelity? He had a splendid
character. She certainly had not. She had done countless things that
Seymour must have hated, and secretly condemned. And yet he had
somehow been able to go on loving her. Was that because he had always
instinctively known that somewhere within her there was a traditional
virtue which marched with his, that there was a voice which spoke his
language?

"I suppose, in spite of all, in a way we are akin," she thought.

And she began to wish vaguely that he knew it, that he knew what had
happened between her and Beryl. As she looked at his "cauliflower,"
bent towards her while he talked, at his strong soldier's face, at
his faithful eyes, the eyes of the "old dog," she wished that it were
possible to let Seymour know a little bit of the best of her. Not that
she was proud of what she had done. She was too much akin to Seymour to
be proud of such a thing, But Seymour would be pleased with her. And it
would be pleasant to give him pleasure. It would be like giving him
a small, a very small, reward for his long faithfulness, for his very
beautiful and touching loyalty.

"What is it, Adela?" he said.

And a keen, searching look had come into his eyes.

She smiled vaguely, meeting his gaze. She still felt curiously detached,
although she was able to think quite connectedly.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I feel you are not as usual to-day."

"In what way?"

"Something has happened. I don't, of course, wish to know what it is.
But it has changed you, my dear."

"In what way?" she said again.

His reply startled her, set her free from her feeling of numbness,
of light detachment, from what she called to herself her "St. Moritz
feeling."

"I feel as if you were coming into possession of your true self at
last," he said very gravely. "But as if perhaps you scarcely knew it
yet."

A slow red crept in her cheeks, which would never kno