ys--and then part forever. Oh, I'll tell you--"

"You shall tell me all--here!" he said, firmly, crushing her delicate
hands in his own against his breast, so that she felt the beating of
his heart.

"Give me my hand. I'll show you his letter--his last letter to me." And,
trembling, she drew from under her pillow that last scrawled letter,
written from the squalid hotel near the Gare de Sceaux.

No sooner, however, had she placed it in Delafield's hands than she was
conscious of new forces of feeling in herself which robbed the act of
its simplicity. She had meant to plead her lover's cause and her own
with the friend who was nominally her husband. Her action had been a
cry for sympathy, as from one soul to another.

But as Delafield took the letter and began to read, her pulses began to
flutter strangely. She recalled the phrases of passion which the letter
contained. She became conscious of new fears, new compunctions.

For Delafield, too, the moment was one of almost intolerable complexity.
This tender intimacy of night--the natural intimacy of husband and wife;
this sense, which would not be denied, however sternly he might hold it
in check, of her dear form beside him; the little refinements and
self-revelations of a woman's room; his half-rights towards her,
appealing at once to love, and to the memory of that solemn pledge by
which he had won her--what man who deserved the name but must be
conscious, tempestuously conscious, of such thoughts and facts?

And then, wrestling with these smarts, these impulses, belonging to the
natural, physical life, the powers of the moral being--compassion,
self-mastery, generosity; while strengthening and directing all, the man
of faith was poignantly aware of the austere and tender voices
of religion.

Amid this play of influences he read the letter, still kneeling beside
her and holding her fingers clasped in his. She had closed her eyes and
lay still, save for the occasional tremulous movement of her free hand,
which dried the tears on her cheek.

"Thank you," he said, at last, with a voice that wavered, as he put the
letter down. "Thank you. It was good of you to let me see it. It changes
all my thoughts of him henceforward. If he had lived--"

"But he's dead! He's dead!" cried Julie, in a sudden agony, wrenching
her hand from his and burying her face in the pillow. "Just when he
wanted to live. Oh, my God--my God! No, there's no God--nothing that
cares--that takes