contains a
discharge, in full, for the money I have lent you. I have also ventured
to place to your credit, at your own bank, a sum sufficient to give you
a fresh start. When you return to Cadogan Square, or, at least, this
evening, you will receive a communication from the Prime Minister,
inviting you to become one of the International Board of Arbitration on
the Alaskan question. The position, as you know, is a distinguished one,
and if you should be successful, your future career should be assured."

Barrington broke down. He covered his face with his hands. Great sobs
shook him. Wingrave waited for a few minutes, and then rose to his feet.

"Barrington," he said, "there is one thing more! What the world may say
or think counts for very little. Society reverses its own judgments and
eats its own words every day. A little success will bring it to your
feet like a whipped dog. It is for yourself I say this, for yourself
alone. There is no reason why you should hesitate to accept any service
I may be able to render you. You understand me?"

Barrington's face was like the face of a young man. All the cloud of
suspicion and doubts and fears was suddenly lifted. He looked through
new eyes on to a new world.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Not that I ever doubted it, Wingrave,
but--thank God!"...

Barrington left the house radiant,--Lady Ruth and Wingrave were
alone. She watched him close the door and turn towards her, with a new
timidity. The color came and went in her pale cheeks, her eyes were
no longer tired. When he turned towards her, she leaned to him with a
little seductive movement of her body. Her hands stole out towards him.

"Wingrave!" she murmured.

His first action seemed to crush all the desperate joy which was rising
fast in her heart. He took one hand, and he led her to a chair.

"Ruth," he said, "I have been talking to your husband. There are only a
few words I want to say to you."

"There are only three I want to hear from you," she murmured, and her
eyes were pleading with him passionately all the time. "It seems to me
that I have been waiting to hear them all my life. Wingrave, I am so
tired--and I am losing--I want to leave it all!"

"Exactly," he answered cheerfully, "what you are going to do. You are
going to America with your husband."

"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I am rather tired of the game," he said, "that is all. I am like the
child who li