as arrested. And still, after two years in prison, he
will not speak. Michael will never say anything."

The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waning
afternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frosty
breath was stirring the dead leaves. The butterfly had closed his wings
for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. A
tiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death.

Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her.

"I must go in," she said.

They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods
from the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them
above the gathering sea mist.

They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the
consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which
had drawn them together.

"I will come again soon, if I may," he said diffidently, "unless seeing
me reminds you of painful things." His voice had lowered itself
involuntarily.

"I like to see you," said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from
him like a shadow among the shadows.

The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any
possible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them,
which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them.

He pondered over them as he rode home.

How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been
a happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss
was still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had shown
towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to
shield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her
sorrowing compassion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she had
shown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds!

Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women he
was aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle,
mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest
owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and
treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by
sudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow.

But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above the
ordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level of
pettiness and vanity, by her simplic