ack and schooling his
syllables so sternly that, in what seemed to him his hour of Gethsemane,
he spoke with a sort of unedged flatness, "your semblance of success has
been splendid, magnificent. Until to-night I believed absolutely that
you no longer cared for me--and that you were happy.

"From the first I had seen in this marriage a certainty of disaster ...
but when I came here I found a succession of bewildering surprises.
These surprises entirely blinded me to the truth. Your serene bearing
had every mark of genuineness, but there were other things, too--things
beyond your control. The very place was transformed. Eben Tollman
himself was really another man. His manner was no longer that of the
bigot. He had learned the art of smiling."

Conscience shook her head.

"That is only another reason why you must go away, Stuart. Eben has
always been the soul of generosity to me. He hates from the core of his
heart these changes of which you speak. He has tolerated them only
because I wanted them. With you here I can't be just to him. I contrast
the little characteristics in him that grate on me and annoy me with the
qualities in you that set me eagerly on fire. I tell you it's all unjust
and it's all my fault."

She paused and then, because her knees still felt weak and her head was
swimming, she dropped wearily down and sat on the small bench at the
side of the float.

Stuart's senses were keyed to concert pitch. Some tempting voice
whispered to his inner realization that, should he pitch the battle on
the plane of passion's attack, he could sweep her from her anchorage. To
his mind she was more beautiful and desirable than Circe must have
seemed to Ulysses, but like the great wanderer he battled against that
voluptuous madness. If he lost it would be the defeat of a man, but if
he won, by that appeal, only the victory of an animal. His voice
remained almost judicially calm.

"But this changed attitude--this positive urbanity where there used to
be utter intolerance--how do you account for that?"

She looked very straight into his eyes and spoke steadfastly.

"I can only account for it in one way--and it's a thing which doesn't
make me feel very proud of myself, Stuart. I think that he, too, has
been deluded by what you call my splendid semblance. I believe he trusts
me utterly. He has seen us together and thinks I've stood the acid
test--and I've got to do it."

"But why did he ask me here, if he thought the