re a very great deal to me. I think that this has
broken my heart."

"Mrs. Craven, if there is anything that I can do that will put things
right, if I can say anything to Rupert, if I can tell him anything,
explain anything, I will. I think I can tell you, Mrs. Craven, why it
is that Rupert does not wish me to marry Margaret. I have something to
confess--to you."

Then he was defeated at last? He had surrendered? In another moment the
words "I killed Carfax and Rupert knows that I killed him" would have
left his lips--but Mrs. Craven had not heard his words. Her face was
turned away from him again and she spoke in a strange, monotonous voice
as one speaks in a dream.

The words seemed to be created out of the faded sofa, the misty window,
the dim shadowy bed. She was crying--her hands were pressed to her
face--the words came between her sobs.

"It is too much for me. All these years I have kept silence. Now I can
bear it no longer. If Rupert leaves me, it will kill me, but unless I
speak to some one I shall die of all this silence, . . . I cannot bear
any longer to be alone with God."

Was it his own voice? Were these his own words? Had things gone so far
with him that he did not know--"I cannot bear any longer to be alone
with God. . . ." Was not that his own perpetual cry?

"Mr. Dune, I killed my husband."

In the silence that followed the only sound was her stifled crying and
the crackling fire.

"You knew from the beginning."

"No, I did not know."

"But you were different from all the others. I felt it at once when I
saw you. You knew, you understood, you were sorry for me."

"I am sorry. I understand. But I did not know."

"Let me tell you." She turned her face towards him and began to speak
eagerly.

He took her hand between his.

"Oh! the relief--now at once--after all these years of silence. Fifteen
years. . . . It happened when Rupert was a tiny boy. You see he was
a bad man. I found it out almost at once--after a month or two. But I
loved him madly--utterly. I did not care about his being bad--that does
not matter to a woman--but he set about breaking my heart. It amused
him. Margaret was born. He used to terrify me with the things that he
would teach her. He said that he would make her as big a devil as he
was himself. I prayed God that I might never have another child and
then Rupert was born. From that moment my one prayer was that my husband
might die.

"At last my opportunity came. H