l
such as to justify your taking the law into your own hands, and
forsaking him for ever. Listen to me, dear! If you will find out these
things, if you can say to yourself and to me, and to your conscience,
'he has found happiness without me, he has ignored and forgotten the
tie between us, he does not need my sympathy, or my care, or my
companionship,' then I will have no more scruples. Only let us be sure
that you are morally free from that man."

She wrenched her hands away from his. There was a bright, red spot of
colour flaring on her cheeks. Her eyes were on fire.

"You are mad!" she cried; "you do not love me! No man can know what
love is who talks about doubts and scruples like you do! You are too
cold and too selfish to realize what love can be! And to think that I
have stopped to reason, to reason with you! Oh! my God! What have I
done to be humbled like this?"

"Berenice!"

"Leave me! Don't come near me any more! I shall thrust you out of my
life! You never loved me! I could not have loved you! Go away! It has
been a hideous mistake!"

"Berenice!"

"My God! Will you leave me?" she moaned. "You are driving me mad! I
hate you!"

Her white hand flashed out into the darkness, as though she would have
struck him! He bowed his head and went.

CHAPTER XVII

Matravers knew after that night that his was a broken life. Any future
such as he had planned for himself of active, intellectual toil had
now, he felt, become impossible. His ideals were all broken down. A
woman had found her way in between the joints of an armour which he
had grown to believe impenetrable, and henceforth life was a wreck.
The old, quiet stoicism, which had been the inner stimulus of his
career, was a thing altogether overthrown and impotent. He was too old
to reconstruct life anew; the fragments were too many, and the wreck
too complete. Only his philosophy showed him very plainly what the end
must be. Across the sky of his vision it seemed to be written in
letters of fire.

Early in the morning, having made his toilette as usual with a care
almost fastidious, he went out into the sunlit streets, moving like a
man in a deep dream amongst scenes which had become familiar to him
day by day. At his lawyer's he made his will, and signed it, thankful
for once for his great loneliness, insomuch as there was no one
who could call the disposal of his property to a stranger an
injustice--for he had left all to little Freddy; left