ciously on his part stabbed Julia
to the very soul. For him, the sting was gone, because, at the first
prick, Julia was there to take it and bear it. No need to conceal from
her now the bitterness of his moods; she would meet him halfway. He was
worrying about that old affair? Ah, he mustn't do that--here were
Julia's arms about him, her lovely face close to his, her sweet and
earnest sympathy ready to probe bravely into his darkest thought, and
find him some balm. Still gowned from a ball, perhaps, jewelled,
perfumed, dragging her satin train after her, she would come straight
into his arms, with: "Something's worrying you, dearest, tell me what it
is? I _love_ you so--"

No resentment on Jim's part could live for a moment in this atmosphere.
He only wanted to tell her about it, to be soothed like a small boy, to
catch his beautiful wife in his arms, and win from her lips again and
again the assurance that she loved him and him alone. What these scenes
cost Julia's own fine sense of delicacy and dignity, only Julia knew.
They left her with a vague feeling of shame, a consciousness of
compromise. For a day or two after such an episode a new hesitancy would
mark her manner, a certain lack of confidence lend pathos to the
sweetness of her voice.

But no outside influence ever could bring home to her the realization of
the shadow on her life as forcibly as did her own inner musings, the
testimony of her own soul. If she had but been innocent, how easy to
bear Jim's scorn, or the scorn of the whole world! It was the bitter
knowledge that she had taken her life in her own hands nearly twenty
years ago, and wrecked it more surely than if she had torn out her own
eyes, that made her heart sick within her now. She, who loved dignity,
who loved purity, who loved strength, must carry to her grave the
knowledge of her own detestable weakness! She must instruct her
daughter, guarding the blue eyes and the active mind from even the
knowledge of life's ugly side, she must hold the highest standard of
purity before her son, knowing, as she knew, that far back at her life's
beginning, were those few hideous weeks that, in the eyes of the world,
could utterly undo the work of twenty strong and steadfast years! She
must be silent when she longed to cry aloud, she must train herself to
cry aloud at the thing that she had been. And she must silently endure
the terrible fact that her husband knew, and that he would never forget.
Over and