e--that nearest the
farm-house--they sat as on the previous night, looking out over the
black and unresponsive waters, communing together in undertones.

In that hour they learned much of one another: much that had seemed
strange and questionable assumed, in the understanding of each, the
complexion of the normal and right. Whitaker spoke at length and in much
detail of his Wilful Missing years without seeking to excuse the
wrong-minded reasoning which had won him his own consent to live under
the mask of death. He told of the motives that had prompted his return,
of all that had happened since in which she had had no part--with a
single reservation. One thing he kept back: the time for that was not
yet.

A listener in his turn, he heard the history of the little girl of the
Commercial House breaking her heart against the hardness of life in what
at first seemed utterly futile endeavour to live by her own efforts,
asking nothing more of the man who had given her his name. To make
herself worthy of that name, so that, living or dead, he might have no
cause to be ashamed of her or to regret the burden he had assumed: this
was the explanation of her fierce striving, her undaunted renewal of the
struggle in the face of each successive defeat, her renunciation of the
competence his forethought had provided for her. So also--since she
would take nothing from her husband--pride withheld her from asking
anything of her family or her friends. She cut herself off utterly from
them all, fought her fight alone.

He learned of the lean years of drifting from one theatrical
organization to another, forced to leave them one by one by conditions
impossible and intolerable, until Ember found her playing ingenue parts
in a mean provincial stock company; of the coming of Max, his interest
in her, the indefatigable pains he had expended coaching her to bring
out the latent ability his own genius divined; of the initial
performance of "Joan Thursday" before a meagre and indifferent audience,
her instant triumph and subsequent conquest of the country in half a
dozen widely dissimilar roles; finally of her decision to leave the
stage when she married, for reasons comprehensible, demanding neither
exposition nor defence.

"It doesn't matter any longer," she commented, concluding: "I loved and
I hated it. It was deadly and it was glorious. But it no longer matters.
It is finished: Sara Law is no more."

"You mean never to go back to the s