"I am trying to think, and when one reaches the point of utter
honesty with oneself, one sees things more clearly. I told you that
I thought Eben himself had come to believe this marriage a failure.
But now I see why more clearly.

"It was my fault. I have been absolutely true to him in act, but
perhaps, if I had let myself, I could after all have been true in a
larger sense: in the sense of a better understanding. Perhaps I can
still--and I mean to try.

"I know that you distrust him, but since last night I have been
thinking of his great generosity, and of what unfaltering trust he
has had in me. A trust like that ought to have brought him an
allegiance not only of form but of the heart itself.

"Had he been a mean or suspicious man there were many
circumstantial things that might have aroused his jealousy, but he
has always been above jealousy.

"We know that there has been no taint of guilt--that our love has
been, by ordinary standards, entirely innocent. But to him it has
all been giving--and receiving nothing.

"From first to last he has trusted me. Leaving me here with you is
a final demonstration of that trust--and he loves me.

"I am writing about Eben because I want you, who are at heart so
just, to be fair in your thought of him. In our decision to
separate for all time--"

There the pen faltered and Conscience had to rest for a moment.

"--you would not think the more of me, if you did not believe that
I meant to carry the effort through to the end. I am going to begin
over with what you call the hopeless experiment--and even now I
think I have a chance ... a fighting chance of winning. If I have,
I owe it to you."

CHAPTER XXXI

In Boston Eben would have been safely housed against the storm, but Eben
was not in Boston. He had driven to the village and put his horse and
buggy in the livery stable. At the station he had bought a ticket for
Boston, but when the express made its first stop he had dropped off to
buy a paper and had intentionally allowed his train to go on without
him.

To several acquaintances whom he met he confided the circumstance of his
clumsy mistake, and one of them remembered in the light of after events
that though he spoke with his ordinary reserve of manner his eyes had
held a "queer glitter." Tollman told these persons that he