was very generous! I might
easily have pleased you very much more by saying I broke it off quite of
my own accord."

"That wasn't why you told me. You wanted me to laugh at Romer and think
him ridiculous."

"I don't at all. I was in the ridiculous position. Be a woman of the
world, Val. Don't talk bosh! We shall soon forget it happened."

"I shall never forget," she answered. "And things _can't_ go on as they
were, because I think he's behaved magnificently, because I think he's
heroic. And if I didn't appreciate the way he spared me I should be....
Why, don't you realise what it must have been for him, Harry, to hear
every word we said? And yet he didn't try to make me suffer for it!"

"He complained that _I_ made you cry!" said Harry with a ghost of a
smile.

"Look here, Harry, it's no good. I see I was right about Romer from the
first. I married him because I thought there was something
remarkable--something finer than other people about him. And I was
right."

"If you talk like that, I shall know you're in love with him," said
Harry tauntingly and angrily. "_I_ was a fool to tell you. You're just
upset, my dear," he added, "at the idea of his knowing of the whole
thing. By to-morrow, when he comes back, everything will have calmed
down."

"I want to be left alone," said Valentia.

Harry was annoyed, for he himself was not just now in the mood for
reverie, and even in the smallest things he disliked giving up his own
wishes.

"Oh, very well," he said ungraciously; "perhaps it's a pity I wrote the
letter."

"Perhaps it is," she answered as she went away and shut the door.

Harry sat up late, swearing at his own indiscretion and the
unaccountability of women. But he was not prepared for what followed.

The next morning, as he was dressing, a note was given to him. It said--

"Dear Harry,

"After what you told me yesterday, I feel I never wish to see you
again. This is not anger; but it's incurable. I can't account for
it, but it is there. How you could have been so stupid as to think
I could remain with both you and Romer in the house with this
knowledge between us, I simply can't understand. How could I help
contrasting his generosity with your self-interested selfishness? I
am not angry any more about Miss Walmer. I'm quite indifferent. If
you married her to-morrow it would give me no pain. The only kind
thing you can do for me now, and the one thi