d, recognizing Doctor Pelliter.
He half rose to go to the other with an inquiry; but he dropped quickly
back on the bank, looked away.--Some time before the doctor had tied a
towel about his waist ... it had been a white towel.

His mind returned to Lettice and the terrible mischance that had been
brought upon her; that he had brought on her. He tested the latter clause,
and attempted to reject it: he had done nothing to provoke such a terrible
actuality. He rehearsed the entire chain of events which had resulted in
the purchase of the pearl necklace; he followed it as far back as the
evening when, from the minister's lawn, he had seen Meta Beggs undressing
at her window. He could nowhere discover any desperate wrong committed. He
knew men, plenty of them, who were actually unfaithful to their wives: he
had done nothing of that sort. He endeavored to grow infuriated with Meta
Beggs, then with Mrs. Caley; he endeavored to place upon them the
responsibility for that attenuated, agonized sound from the house; but
without success. He had made a terrible blunder. But, in a universe where
the slightest fairness ruled, he and not Lettice would pay for an error
purely his own.

Lettice was so young, he realized suddenly.

He recalled her as she sat alone, under the lamp, with her shawl about her
shuddering shoulders, waiting for the inevitable, begging him to assure
her that it would be all right. It would, of course, be all right in the
end. It must! Then things would be different. He made himself no
extravagant promises of reform, no fevered reproaches; but things would be
different.--He would take Lettice driving; he had the prettiest young wife
in Greenstream, and he would show people that he realized it. She had been
Lettice Hollidew, the daughter of old Pompey, the richest man in the
county.

The importance of that latter fact had dimmed; the omnipotence of money
had dwindled: for instance, any conceivable sum would be powerless to
still that cry from within. In a way it had risen from the very fact of
Pompey Hollidew's fortune--Meta Beggs would never have considered him
aside from it. He endeavored to curse the old man's successful avarice,
but without any satisfaction. Every cause contributing to the present
impending catastrophe led directly back to himself, to his indecision. The
responsibility, closing about him, seemed to shut out the air from his
vicinity, to make labored his breathing. He put out a hand, as tho