ch my want of forethought, my--my culpable selfishness may have
caused, was borne by myself alone."

"I was unhappy too," she said, speaking as simply as he. She looked up
at him suddenly as she said it. There was a wet glint in her deep violet
eyes. She believed absolutely at that moment that she had been as
unhappy as he for four years. There was no suspicion in her mind that
she was not genuine. Only the sincere ever doubt their sincerity. Fay
never doubted hers. She felt what she said, and the sweet eyes turned on
Michael had the transparent fixity of a child's.

They walked unsteadily back to the others and spoke no more to each
other that day. Conscience pricked Fay that night.

"Leave him alone," it said. "You have both suffered. Let the dead past
bury its dead."

Fay's conscience was a wonderfully adaptable one with a tendency to
poetic quotation. It showed considerable tact in adopting her point of
view. Nevertheless from that generally fallacious standpoint it often
gave her quite respectable advice. "Leave him alone," said the
hoodwinked monitor. "You are married and Andrea is easily jealous.
Michael is sensitive, and has been deeply in love with you. Don't stir
him up to fall in love with you again. _Leave him alone._"

The young British matron waxed indignant. Was she, Fay, the kind of
woman to forget her duty to her husband? Was Michael the kind of man to
make love to a married woman? Such an idea was preposterous, unjust to
both of them. And people would begin to talk at once if she and her
cousin (Michael was only a distant connection) were studiously to avoid
each other, if they could not exchange a few words simply like old
friends. No one had suggested an attitude of rigid avoidance; but
throughout life Fay had always convinced herself of the advisability of
a certain wished-for course by conjuring up, only to discard it, the
extreme and most obviously senseless opposite of that course--as the
only alternative.

She imagined her husband saying: "Why won't you ask Mr. Carstairs to
dinner? He is your cousin and he is charming. What can the reason be
that you so earnestly refuse to meet him?" And then Andrea, who always
"got ideas into his head," would begin to suspect that there had been
"something" between them.

_No. No._ It would be far wiser to meet naturally now and then, and to
treat Michael like an old friend. Fay had a somewhat muffled conception
of what an old friend might be. After dee