own chamber. The
windows were dark with the now furious rain, but a light fire burned
upon the hearth. Rand stood looking down upon it. His wife watched him,
her arms resting upon the back of a great flowered chair. Suddenly she
spoke. "Lewis, what is the matter?"

He half turned toward her. "I believed that you would see. And yet you
were blind to that earlier course of mine."

"Something dreadful is the matter. Tell me at once."

After a moment he repeated sombrely, "'At once.' How can I tell you at
once? There are things that are slowly brought about by all time, and to
show them as they truly are would require all time again. How can I tell
you at all? My God!"

"I feel," she answered, "years older than I did two weeks ago. If there
was something then to forgive, I have forgiven it. Our souls did not
come together to share only the lit paths, the honey in the cup. Tell
me, Lewis."

"It is black and bitter--there is no light, and it will kill the
sweetness. If I could live with you and you never know it, I would try
to do so--try to keep it secret from you as I did that lesser thing. I
cannot--even now, without a word, you know in part."

"Tell me all--_that lesser thing_."

Rand turned from the fire and, coming to the great chair against whose
back she leaned, knelt in its flowered lap and bowed his forehead upon
her hands. "I am glad," he said, in a voice so low that she bent to hear
it,--"I am glad now that I have no son."

There was a silence while the rain dashed against the window-panes and
the thunder rolled overhead; then Jacqueline pressed her cheek against
his bowed head. "What have you done?" she whispered. "Tell me--oh, tell
me!"

After a moment he told her. "I have killed a man."

"Killed--It was by accident!"

"No. It was not accident. I came upon him by accident--I'll claim no
more than that. The black rage was there to blind me, make me deaf--mole
and adder! But it was not accident, what I did. I'll not cheat you here,
and I'll not cheat myself. The name of it is murder."

He felt her hands quiver beneath his forehead, and he put up his own and
clasped her wrist. "Are you thinking, 'I should have left him in the
tobacco-fields'? As for me, I know that I ought never to have spoken to
you there beneath the apple tree."

"Lewis, who was the man?"

He made no answer, and after a moment or two, numbed and grey, had
passed, she needed none. The truth fell like a stroke from glowing iron.