indelicate, vulgar, capable of besmirching the most sacred and intimate
of relations.

She rose from her seat.

"I must go and take my things off," she said, in "a vague voice," and as
she moved she tottered a little. He turned to look at her. Amid his own
crushing sense of defeat and catastrophe, his natural and righteous
indignation, he remembered that she had been ill--he remembered their
child. But whether from the excitement, first of the meeting in the
Vercelli palace, and now of this scene--or merely from the heat of the
fire over which she had been hanging, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes
blazed. Her beauty had never been more evident; but it made little
appeal to him; it was the wild, ungovernable beauty from which he had
suffered. He saw that she was excited, but there was an air also of
returning physical vigor; and the nascent feeling which might have been
strengthened by pallor and prostration died away.

Kitty moved as though to pass him and go to her room, which opened out
of the <i>salon</i>. But as she neared him she suddenly caught him by the
arm.

"William!--William! don't do it!--don't resign! Let me apologize!"

He was angered by her persistence, and merely said, coldly:

"I have given you my reasons, Kitty, why such a course is impossible."

"And--and you start to-morrow morning?"

"By the early train. Please let me go, Kitty. There are many things to
arrange. I must order the gondola, and see if the people here can cash
me a check."

"You mean--to leave me alone?" The words had a curious emphasis.

"I had a few words with Miss French before you came in. The packet
arrived by the evening post, and seeing that it was books--for you--I
opened it. After about an hour"--he turned and walked away again--"I saw
my bearings. Then I called Miss French, told her I should have to go
to-morrow, and asked her how long she could stay with you."

"William!" cried Kitty again, leaning heavily on the table beside
her--"don't go!--don't leave me!"

His face darkened.

"So you would prevent me from taking the only honorable, the only decent
way out of this thing that remains to me?"

She made no immediate reply. She stood--wrapped apparently in painful
abstraction--a creature lovely and distraught. The masses of her fair
hair loosened by the breeze on the canal had fallen about her cheeks and
shoulders; her black hat framed the white brow and large, feverish eyes;
and the sable cape she had worn