in her arms, and claim him for at least a friend and brother,
began to wonder whether she might not really be innocent. She had
confessed to nothing--she had asserted her blamelessness--she had never
been known to waver from the truth; might she not have been able to
explain her actions? With his regret for having, in such hasty passion,
so compromised her before the world that no explanation could henceforth
shield her from invidious slander, he now began to feel sorrow for
having so roughly used her. Whether she was false or not--whether or not
he now loved her--was it any the less true that she had once been
constant and loved by him, and did the memories of that time, not so
very long ago, bring no answering emotion to his heart? Who, after all,
had ever so worshipped him? And must he now really lose her? Might it
not be that he had been made the victim of some conspiracy, aided by
fortuitous elements?

It was just at this point, when, in his thoughts, he was stumbling near
the truth, that the touch of Leta's hand aroused him; and in that
instant her possible agency in the matter flashed upon him like a new
revelation. She saw the tiger-like look which he fastened upon her, and
she recoiled, perceiving at once that she had chosen an inopportune
moment to speak to him. But it was now too late to recede.

'Well?' he demanded.

'I have lighted the lamp,' she faltered forth. 'I knew not that I should
disturb you. Have you further commands for me?'

Still his fierce gaze fixed upon her; but now with a little more of the
composure of searching inquiry.

'It is you who have brought all this destruction and misery upon me,' he
said at length. 'From one step unto another, even to this end, I
recognize your work. I was a weak fool not to have seen it before.'

'Is it about my mistress that you speak?' she responded. 'Is it my fault
that she has been untrue?'

'If she is false, what need to have told me of it? Was it that the
knowledge of it would make me more happy? And did I give it into the
hands of my own slaves to watch over my honor? Is it a part of your duty
that for weeks you should have played the spy upon herself and me, so as
to bring her secret faults to light?'

She stood silent before him, not less amazed at his lingering fondness
for his wife than at his reproaches against herself.

'How know I that she is guilty at all?' he said, continuing the train of
thought into which his doubts and his better na