to throw himself at her feet, and to beg her to
love him alone. Would he only lose her thus, and gain her contempt as
well?

Felicity ceased speaking, looked into the fire with a musing and
thoughtful gaze, smoothing absently the fingers of her gloves, and
waited for the opinion she had asked him to give. She was more than
satisfied now, even a little afraid of the possible expression of the
love she had wished to prove. She had tempted him once before, and he
had yielded; now she was making another impossible demand upon his
self-restraint, calmly asking him to ignore the truth of their own
relationship while she discussed her false duty to another. Suddenly
he stood before her, and she looked up to encounter his eyes, which
seemed to burn with a blue flame in the intensity of his emotion.

"You can't be so foolish as to go back to him!" he cried. "I tell you,
Felicity, it's worse than folly--it's wickedness. I love you, and he
doesn't--I won't let him have you!"

"Oh, don't!" she protested, rising hurriedly in her turn. "I ought not
to have come--how dark it has grown!--I must be going. What shall I
do? He refuses to give me up, and--and I am afraid of him!"

The scene on the edge of the cliff had come back to her mind with new
and terrible force, all the more portentous as she seemed now to have
seen her way of escape made clear. And her husband's face in the
moonlight, when she fled from him in panic into the house! Finally,
his parting threat that very morning, in which he had involved this man
whom she loved. Leigh's arm went about her, and her head rested
against his breast. He bent over her, intoxicated by the fragrance of
her hair and kissing it passionately.

"All questions and doubts are solved in this," he murmured. "It is
different this time, is it not, my darling? What is the use of more
words? We understand each other now." He held her from him. "Look up
into my eyes," he commanded, with reckless exultation. "Your eyes
blind me; how wonderful they are! Do you know what I was thinking, all
the time you were talking to me about Emmet? I was n't half
listening--I was imagining that you were my wife and not his, sitting
with me by the fire. I allowed myself to see things, not as they were,
but as they ought to be, as they shall be!"

"I was a proud woman once," she faltered, "but I have no right to be
proud any more. If you will only understand me, if you will only love
me alway