d done had outraged in him all the natural and all the inherited
instincts of a generous and fastidious nature. The "great gentleman," so
strong in him as in all the best of English statesmen, whether they
spring from the classes or the masses, was up in arms.

She sprang to her feet with a cry. "William, you can't give up politics!
It would make you miserable."

"That can't be helped. And I couldn't go on like this, Kitty--even if
this affair of the book could be patched up. The strain's too great."

They were but a yard apart, and yet she seemed to be looking at him
across a gulf.

"You have been so happy in your work!" This time the sob escaped her.

"Oh, don't let's talk about that," he said, abruptly, as he walked away.
"There'll be a certain relief in giving up the impossible. I'll go back
to my books. We can travel, I suppose, and put politics out of our
heads."

"But--you won't resign your seat?"

"No," he said, after a pause--"no. As far as I can see at present, I
sha'n't resign my seat, though my constituents, of course, will be very
sick. But I doubt whether I shall stand again."

Every phrase fell as though with a thud on Kitty's ear. It was the wreck
of a man's life, and she had done it.

"Shall you--shall you go and see Lord Parham?" she asked, after a pause.

"I shall write to him first. I imagine"--he pointed to the letter lying
on the table--"that creature has already sent him the book. Then later I
daresay I shall see him."

She looked up.

"If I wrote and told him it was all my doing, William?--if I grovelled
to him?"

"The responsibility is mine," he said, sternly. "I had no business to
tell even you the things printed there. I told them at my own risk. If
anything I say has any weight with you, Kitty, you will write nothing."

She spread out her hands to the fire again, and he heard her say, as
though to herself:

"The thing is--the awful thing is, that I'm mad--I must be mad. I never
thought of all this when I was writing it. I wrote it in a kind of
dream. In the first place, I wanted to glorify you--"

He broke into an exclamation.

"Your <i>taste</i>, Kitty!--where was your taste? That a wife should praise a
husband in public! You could only make us both laughing-stocks."

His handsome features quivered a little. He felt this part of it the
most galling, the most humiliating of all; and she understood. In his
eyes she had shown herself not only reckless and treacherous, but