first time he had entered his wife's room. Through all her
misery, Julie felt a strange thrill as her husband's face was thus
revealed to her, brightly illumined, in the loneliness of the night.
Then the thrill passed into pain--the pain of a new and sharp
perception.

Delafield, in truth, was some two or three years younger than Warkworth.
But the sudden impression on Julie's mind, as she saw him thus, was of a
man worn and prematurely aged--markedly older and graver, even, since
their marriage, since that memorable evening by the side of Como when,
by that moral power of which he seemed often to be the mere channel and
organ, he had overcome her own will and linked her life with his.

She looked at him in a kind of terror. Why was he so pale--an embodied
grief? Warkworth's death was not a mortal stroke for _him_.

He came closer, and still Julie's eyes held him. Was it her fault,
this--this shadowed countenance, these suggestions of a dumb strain and
conflict, which not even his strong youth could bear without betrayal?
Her heart cried out, first in a tragic impatience; then it melted within
her strangely, she knew not how.

She sat up in bed and held out her hands. He thought of that evening in
Heribert Street, after Warkworth had left her, when she had been so sad
and yet so docile. The same yearning, the same piteous agitation was in
her attitude now.

He knelt down beside the bed and put his arms round her. She clasped her
hands about his neck and hid her face on his shoulder. There ran through
her the first long shudder of weeping.

"He was so young!" he heard her say through sobs. "So young!"

He raised his hand and touched her hair tenderly.

"He died serving his country," he said, commanding his voice with
difficulty. "And you grieve for him like this! I can't pity him
so much."

"You thought ill of him--I know you did." She spoke between deep,
sobbing breaths. "But he wasn't--he wasn't a bad man."

She fell back on her pillow and the tears rained down her cheeks.

Delafield kissed her hand in silence.

"Some day--I'll tell you," she said, brokenly.

"Yes, you shall tell me. It would help us both."

"I'll prove to you he wasn't vile. When--when he proposed that to me he
was distracted. So was I. How could he break off his engagement? Now you
see how she loved him. But we couldn't part--we couldn't say good-bye.
It had all come on us unawares. We wanted to belong to each other--just
for two da