Yes; if we could somehow spare him----"

She had dropped her hands and turned her startled eyes on him. It seemed
to her an age since she had thought of Owen!

"You see, don't you," Darrow continued, "that if you send me away
now----"

She interrupted: "Yes, I see----" and there was a long silence between
them. At length she said, very low: "I don't want any one else to suffer
as I'm suffering..."

"Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow," Darrow went on. "Any sudden
change of plan may make him think..."

Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on every side of
her! It had seemed possible to control her grief and face Darrow
calmly while she was upheld by the belief that this was their last hour
together, that after he had passed out of the room there would be no
fear of seeing him again, no fear that his nearness, his look, his
voice, and all the unseen influences that flowed from him, would
dissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the idea of
having to conspire with him to shield Owen, of keeping up with him, for
Owen's sake, a feint of union and felicity. To live at Darrow's side in
seeming intimacy and harmony for another twenty-four hours seemed harder
than to live without him for all the rest of her days. Her strength
failed her, and she threw herself down and buried her sobs in the
cushions where she had so often hidden a face aglow with happiness.

"Anna----" His voice was close to her. "Let me talk to you quietly. It's
not worthy of either of us to be afraid."

Words of endearment would have offended her; but her heart rose at the
call to her courage.

"I've no defense to make," he went on. "The facts are miserable enough;
but at least I want you to see them as they are. Above all, I want you
to know the truth about Miss Viner----"

The name sent the blood to Anna's forehead. She raised her head and
faced him. "Why should I know more of her than what she's told me? I
never wish to hear her name again!"

"It's because you feel about her in that way that I ask you--in the name
of common charity--to let me give you the facts as they are, and not as
you've probably imagined them."

"I've told you I don't think uncharitably of her. I don't want to think
of her at all!"

"That's why I tell you you're afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Yes. You've always said you wanted, above all, to look at life, at the
human problem, as it is, without fear and without hypocrisy; and it's
not alway