o not know. If I
could judge coldly I should say that it was of feminine inspiration. A
man, particularly one of Boyce's temperament, who was eager for the
possession of a passionately loved woman, would have carried her off to
a little Eden of their own. A calm consideration of the facts leads to
the suggestion of a half-hearted acquiescence on the part of an
entangled man in the romantic scheme of an inexperienced girl to whom
he had suddenly become all in all.

Such is my plea in extenuation of Boyce's conduct (if plea there can
be), seeing that he raised not a shadow of one of his own. You may say
that my plea is no excuse for his betrayal; that no man, even if he is
tempted, can be pardoned for non-control of his passions. But I am
asking for no pardon; I am trying to obtain your understanding.
Remember what I have told you about Boyce, his great bull-neck, his
blood-sodden life-preserver, the physical repulsion I felt when he
carried me in his arms. In such men the animal instinct is stronger at
times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your
sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived
liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction.
Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of
a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of
Althea's character--her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness,
combined with her modern spirit of independence. A fatal anomaly; a
perilous balance of qualities. Once the soft sentimentality was warmed
into romantic passion, the modern spirit led it recklessly to a modern
conclusion.

The liaison was short-lived. The man was remorseful. He loved another
woman. Very quickly did the poor girl awaken from her dream.

"I was cruel," said Boyce, fixing me with those awful black spectacles,
"I know it. I ought to have married her. But if I had married her, I
should have been more cruel. I should have hated her. It would have
been an impossible life for both of us. One day I had to tell her so.
Not brutally. In a normal state I think I am as kind-hearted and gentle
as most men. And I couldn't be brutal, feeling an unutterable cur and
craving her forgiveness. But I wanted Betty and I swore that only one
thing should keep me from her."

"One thing?" I asked.

"The thing that didn't happen," said he.

And so it seemed that Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid,
fatalistic si