y her brain had never worked quite normally since that tragedy on
the cliffs."

"No, it is possible she was the victim of a sort of monomania," conceded
Anstice. "In which case no other person would be connected in her mind
with the affair save the one against whom the campaign was directed. It
is a pretty lame explanation, I own, but then the workings of the human
mind are so extraordinarily incomprehensible sometimes that I, for my
part, have very nearly ceased being surprised at anything a man or woman
may be disposed to do!"

"Tochatti tells me she grew very uneasy when things began to look really
black," continued Chloe. "She had not understood when she started that
letters of this kind rendered one liable to imprisonment sometimes; and
she was horrified when she discovered that fact. I believe she would
willingly have undone the harm she had done if it had been possible; for
she couldn't help seeing, as the days went on, that I was in grave
danger of incurring the penalty of her fault. Once, at least, I am sure
she nerved herself to tell the whole truth----"

"Her good intentions evidently went to pave a place which shall be
nameless," said Major Carstairs dryly. "After all, her affection for you
seems to have been a very pinchbeck affair, Chloe, if she could calmly
stand by and see you suffer for her wickedness. And for my part I don't
see how you can be expected to forgive her."

For a second Chloe sat silently in her corner of the couch; and in her
face were the traces of the conflicting emotions which made for a moment
a battlefield of her soul.

After all Chloe Carstairs was a very human woman; and it is not in human
nature to suffer a great wrong and feel no resentment against those who
have inflicted that wrong. Had she been able to forgive Tochatti
immediately, to condone her wickedness, to restore the woman to her old
place in her esteem, Chloe had been something less--or more--than human;
and that she was after all only mortal was proved by her answer to
Carstairs' last speech.

"I don't think I have forgiven her--yet----" she said very quietly. "At
the same time I don't care to doubt the genuineness of her affection for
me. I would rather think that she turned coward at the notion of
suffering punishment, and let me endure it in her place through a
selfish terror which forbade her to own up and take the blame herself."

"Well--if you look at it like that----" Major Carstairs was evidently
not sa