ing to! Men don't give their lives away like that. If you won't
have mine, it's at least my own, to do the best I can with."

"The best you can--that's what I mean! How can there be a 'best' for you
that's made of some one else's worst?"

He sat down again with a groan. "I don't know! It seemed such a slight
thing--all on the surface--and I've gone aground on it because it was on
the surface. I see the horror of it just as you do. But I see, a little
more clearly, the extent, and the limits, of my wrong. It's not as black
as you imagine."

She lowered her voice to say: "I suppose I shall never understand; but
she seems to love you..."

"There's my shame! That I didn't guess it, didn't fly from it. You say
you'll never understand: but why shouldn't you? Is it anything to be
proud of, to know so little of the strings that pull us? If you knew a
little more, I could tell you how such things happen without offending
you; and perhaps you'd listen without condemning me."

"I don't condemn you." She was dizzy with struggling impulses. She
longed to cry out: "I DO understand! I've understood ever since you've
been here!" For she was aware, in her own bosom, of sensations so
separate from her romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body and
soul divided against themselves. She recalled having read somewhere that
in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed to wear a distinctive dress
lest they should recognize each other and learn their numbers and their
power. So, in herself, she discerned for the first time instincts
and desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim
passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry of mutiny.

"Oh, I don't know what to think!" she broke out. "You say you didn't
know she loved you. But you know it now. Doesn't that show you how you
can put the broken bits together?"

"Can you seriously think it would be doing so to marry one woman while I
care for another?"

"Oh, I don't know...I don't know..." The sense of her weakness made her
try to harden herself against his arguments.

"You do know! We've often talked of such things: of the monstrousness of
useless sacrifices. If I'm to expiate, it's not in that way." He added
abruptly: "It's in having to say this to you now..."

She found no answer.

Through the silent apartment they heard the sudden peal of the
door-bell, and she rose to her feet. "Owen!" she instantly exclaimed.

"Is Owen in Paris?"

She exp