ves me--and keep her till the same
grave closes over us."

And he went.

He had been absent but a week when I received the telegram announcing
his intended return. I stood--with my back against the mantel, and hands
warming themselves behind my sheltering coat-tails--eager to recognise
his rampant mount of the stairs, to feel the clasp of his hand or its
thump on my shoulder-blade, and hear his cheery "Congratulate me, old
fellow!" that I knew must come. A cab stopped outside, and a key turned
in the lock. Then a slow, heavy tread ascended. We met in the passage.
There was no need for more than a glance at him to abridge the
exuberance of welcome that had bubbled to my lips. I settled with the
cabman, and in a cowardly fashion lingered unduly outside among the rugs
and the travelling impedimenta. I felt somehow that he would prefer to
come face to face with his home in silence. He drank a pretty stiff dose
of brandy before sitting down, and moved the lamp away from his eyes.

"Letters," I indicated.

"Bother letters! Open them or throw them in the fire."

I did neither, but transferred them to his bureau. Then, seeing he was
disinclined for conversation, I relit my old briar pipe that had been
suffered to go out, and lolled in an arm-chair facing the fender.
Presently I surveyed him from the side of an eye. His chin was sunk on
his chest, he was staring at his boots with the blank look of a gambler
who has staked his last. There was something in his attitude that made
me wish myself a dog or a woman, that I might lick, or croon, or croodle
some softness into that stony mask. The silence was so long--so pregnant
with unsyllabled anguish--that at last I closed a warm hand over his
fingers as they clasped the arm-end of his chair.

"Well?"

"Well," he said, huskily, starting a little from his coma and poking a
coal with the toe of his boot, "it's over."

"So I suppose; and the pearl was not----"

"Not for my handling," he interrupted. "I knew you'd think something
hard of her, but you won't, you won't when I tell you----"

He stretched his hand to his glass and emptied it before continuing.

"It came about sooner than I intended--the horizon was so serene I
wanted to lay-to for a bit--but it was no use. We were talking of
something--I forget what--and I made a quotation. You know the chap who
said, 'Show me a woman's clothes at different periods of her life and I
will tell you her history'?"

"Yes; I forget