esn't think like
that. However, he's gone.'

'Ah--it is only a tiff between you, I dare say. I'll start him in
business if he'll come.... Is the cottage at home still in your hands?'

'Yes, it is my freehold. Grammer Stockwool is taking care o' it for me.'

'Good. And back there you go straightway, my pretty madam, and wait till
your husband comes to make it up with you.'

'I won't go!--I don't want him to come!' she sobbed. 'I want to stay
here with you, or anywhere, except where he can come!'

'You will get over that. Now, go back to the flat, there's a dear Avice,
and be ready in one hour, waiting in the hall for me.'

'I don't want to!'

'But I say you shall!'

She found it was no use to disobey. Precisely at the moment appointed
he met her there himself, burdened only with a valise and umbrella, she
with a box and other things. Directing the porter to put Avice and her
belongings into a four-wheeled cab for the railway-station, he walked
onward from the door, and kept looking behind, till he saw the cab
approaching. He then entered beside the astonished girl, and onward they
went together.

They sat opposite each other in an empty compartment, and the tedious
railway journey began. Regarding her closely now by the light of
her revelation he wondered at himself for never divining her secret.
Whenever he looked at her the girl's eyes grew rebellious, and at last
she wept.

'I don't want to go to him!' she sobbed in a miserable voice.

Pierston was almost as much distressed as she. 'Why did you put yourself
and me in such a position?' he said bitterly. 'It is no use to regret
it now! And I can't say that I do. It affords me a way out of a trying
position. Even if you had not been married to him you would not have
married me!'

'Yes, I would, sir.'

'What! You would? You said you wouldn't not long ago.'

'I like you better now! I like you more and more!'

Pierston sighed, for emotionally he was not much older than she. That
hitch in his development, rendering him the most lopsided of God's
creatures, was his standing misfortune. A proposal to her which crossed
his mind was dismissed as disloyalty, particularly to an inexperienced
fellow-islander and one who was by race and traditions almost a
kinswoman.

Little more passed between the twain on that wretched,
never-to-be-forgotten day. Aphrodite, Ashtaroth, Freyja, or whoever the
love-queen of his isle might have been, was punishing him sharply, as