not said a word to
his wife. Even now it was she who took the initiative.

"Let us go into the drawing-room," she suggested, turning and leading
the way. He followed at once, brushing past Lena with cruel emphasis
of manner. There she stood, or rather leaned against the wall, like
one stricken. The jar of his passing seemed to release the tension of
her limbs, and she sank down slowly, noiselessly, in a dead faint.
Emmet neither heeded her anguish nor heard her soft fall upon the heavy
rug. He hurriedly closed the drawing-room door to prevent his
sweetheart from overhearing his interview with his wife, and strode
into the centre of the room, where Felicity had turned at bay.

"What have you come for?" she asked in a low voice. Her face was as
white as his own, but her self-control was greater.

"For you, Felicity," he answered. "You are my wife, and I 've come for
you."

"I did n't know," she returned relentlessly, "but you had come to see
that poor girl in the hall to whom you gave my ring. Looking from the
stairs, I saw by her manner that she thought so too."

"My God, Felicity!" he gasped, "I believe you 've kept her in this
house like a bird in a cage, to torture her as you 've tortured me.
Why did n't you send her away, when you discovered I 'd been making
love to her?"

"For your greater convenience?"

"Oh, as for that," he retorted, "when you left her here in Warwick and
went away, you practically threw her into my arms. But I did n't take
advantage of it,--only once,--and then I stopped short. That was what
I came to explain. I want you to know how much less cause you have to
throw me over in this way than you think. I want you to forgive me,
and to keep your promise. She's nothing to me--nothing. She 's no
more to me than any one of the dozen men you 've been running around
with are to you,--Cobbens, for example, or that young professor up at
the Hall."

There was more than a suggestion of scorn in his refusal to mention his
real rival by name, and in the belittling adjective. His assumption
that she cared nothing for Leigh would perhaps have found acceptance in
her mind only the day before, but now a memory of last night's scene
made her as cruel to her husband as he had just been to Lena Harpster.
She looked at him coolly, aware of her utter awakening from the
adventurous and romantic mood she had mistaken for love, wondering also
that she should ever have supposed this man capable of