en of
anything except her failure.

"Darling little girl," he said, "don't, don't, you make me feel so bad.
Don't say you've been a beast. Do you think _I_ don't know what I've
been to you? Do you think I don't know how true the whole book was?"

She smiled back at him, and he never saw the little bitterness or
pathos there was in it, as she heard his old word of tolerant
affection--"little."

He had not used that word for ages....

He drew her to him and kissed her very lovingly. "Oh, Helena," he
murmured, close beside her ear, "if only you knew how I've missed you,
how miserable I've been, how I have loathed myself. You splendid
people think we horrid selfish beasts don't realise our vices. Oh yes,
we do though, those of us who think, but we hope no one else observes
them. I knew that I had bullied Ruth, sacrificed her life to mine, and
I vowed when I married you--but what's the use? You never change your
nature, and I'm just a selfish swine."

"Don't say such awful things, Hugh," she said gently.

He laughed. "I'd say them for ten years as penance if it did any good.
But now you've told me, now I know you know, it's easier. When I get
selfish, when I begin forgetting _your_ side of the thing, you'll have
to tell me; see? And if you don't, well I've still got your copy of
_The Confessions of_----"

But she stopped his mouth with a kiss. "Hugh," she cried, going to the
table and taking up the paper which had changed their lives, "we'll
never mention that vile book again, and as for those who do"--she tore
the paper savagely across. "And you must _not_ say you are selfish.
It's only that your work----"

"My work!" interrupted Hubert, with a discordant laugh. "I've done
none this last week. I've thought--thought about myself, and that's
good when you're forty but it isn't pleasant. Do you know what is
wrong with me?"

"Nothing," she said gaily, for he spoke with a cavernal gloom and she
desired to change his mood.

He utterly ignored her. "I took a long time finding myself out," he
answered. "That's all. Everybody starts, about eighteen, thinking
he's a genius and bound to end up on Olympus; then about twenty-five,
we settle we're just common fools and take a city job. But I did not.
I've gone on in what they call a fool's paradise; feeding upon praise
and threatening those who did the other thing, until I really thought
that I was some one great! Boyd always _said_ that I was undeveloped