element."

"Thank heaven!" said Durham again.

She looked at him singularly. "Yes--you may thank heaven. Why isn't
it enough to satisfy Fanny?"

"Why isn't what enough?"

"Your being, as I say, a new element; taking her so completely into
a better air. Why shouldn't she be content to begin a new life with
you, without wanting to keep the boy too?"

Durham stared at her dumbly. "I don't know what you mean," he said
at length.

"I mean that in her place--" she broke off, dropping her eyes. "She
may have another son--the son of the man she adores."

Durham rose from his seat and took a quick turn through the room.
She sat motionless, following his steps through her lowered lashes,
which she raised again slowly as he stood before her.

"Your idea, then, is that I should tell her nothing?" he said.

"Tell her _now?_ But, my poor friend, you would be ruined!"

"Exactly." He paused. "Then why have you told _me?_"

Under her dark skin he saw the faint colour stealing. "We see things
so differently--but can't you conceive that, after all that has
passed, I felt it a kind of loyalty not to leave you in ignorance?"

"And you feel no such loyalty to her?"

"Ah, I leave her to you," she murmured, looking down again.

Durham continued to stand before her, grappling slowly with his
perplexity, which loomed larger and darker as it closed in on him.

"You don't leave her to me; you take her from me at a stroke! I
suppose," he added painfully, "I ought to thank you for doing it
before it's too late."

She stared. "I take her from you? I simply prevent your going to her
unprepared. Knowing Fanny as I do, it seemed to me necessary that
you should find a way in advance--a way of tiding over the first
moment. That, of course, is what we had planned that you shouldn't
have. We meant to let you marry, and then--. Oh, there is no
question about the result: we are certain of our case--our measures
have been taken _de loin_." She broke off, as if oppressed by his
stricken silence. "You will think me stupid, but my warning you of
this is the only return I know how to make for your generosity. I
could not bear to have you say afterward that I had deceived you
twice."

"Twice?" He looked at her perplexedly, and her colour rose.

"I deceived you once--that night at your cousin's, when I tried to
get you to bribe me. Even then we meant to consent to the
divorce--it was decided the first day that I saw you." He was
silent, and