e
case, the best of cases, but do we want to spend all our lives defending
it and justifying it? And there's that other life. I know now you care
for Margaret--you care more than you think you do. You have said fine
things of her. I've watched you about her. Little things have dropped
from you. She's given her life for you; she's nothing without you.
You feel that to your marrow all the time you are thinking about these
things. Oh, I'm not jealous, dear. I love you for loving her. I love you
in relation to her. But there it is, an added weight against us, another
thing worth saving."

Presently, I remember, she sat back on her heels and looked up into
my face. "We've done wrong--and parting's paying. It's time to pay.
We needn't have paid, if we'd kept to the track.... You and I, Master,
we've got to be men."

"Yes," I said; "we've got to be men."

4

I was driven to tell Margaret about our situation by my intolerable
dread that otherwise the thing might come to her through some stupid and
clumsy informant. She might even meet Altiora, and have it from her.

I can still recall the feeling of sitting at my desk that night in that
large study of mine in Radnor Square, waiting for Margaret to come home.
It was oddly like the feeling of a dentist's reception-room; only it was
for me to do the dentistry with clumsy, cruel hands. I had left the door
open so that she would come in to me.

I heard her silken rustle on the stairs at last, and then she was in the
doorway. "May I come in?" she said.

"Do," I said, and turned round to her.

"Working?" she said.

"Hard," I answered. "Where have YOU been?"

"At the Vallerys'. Mr. Evesham was talking about you. They were all
talking. I don't think everybody knew who I was. Just Mrs. Mumble I'd
been to them. Lord Wardenham doesn't like you."

"He doesn't."

"But they all feel you're rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park
Lane to hear a new pianist and some other music at Eva's."

"Yes."

"Then I looked in at the Brabants' for some midnight tea before I came
on here. They'd got some writers--and Grant was there."

"You HAVE been flying round...."

There was a little pause between us.

I looked at her pretty, unsuspecting face, and at the slender grace of
her golden-robed body. What gulfs there were between us! "You've been
amused," I said.

"It's been amusing. You've been at the House?"

"The Medical Education Bill kept me."...

After all, why shoul