er tone was
self-directed or addressed to himself--perhaps it comprehended them
both. At any rate, he chose to overlook his own share in it in
replying earnestly: "So much so, that I can't see how you can have
left me nothing to add to what you say you have taken."

"Ah, but you don't know what that is!" She continued to smile,
elusively, ambiguously. "And what's more, you wouldn't believe me if
I told you."

"How do you know?" he rejoined.

"You didn't believe me once before; and this is so much more
incredible."

He took the taunt full in the face. "I shall go away unhappy unless
you tell me--but then perhaps I have deserved to," he confessed.

She shook her head again, advancing toward the door with the evident
intention of bringing their conference to a close; but on the
threshold she paused to launch her reply.

"I can't send you away unhappy, since it is in the contemplation of
your happiness that I have found my reward."

IX

The next day Durham left with his family for England, with the
intention of not returning till after the divorce should have been
pronounced in September.

To say that he left with a quiet heart would be to overstate the
case: the fact that he could not communicate to Madame de Malrive
the substance of his talk with her sister-in-law still hung upon him
uneasily. But of definite apprehensions the lapse of time gradually
freed him, and Madame de Malrive's letters, addressed more
frequently to his mother and sisters than to himself, reflected, in
their reassuring serenity, the undisturbed course of events.

There was to Durham something peculiarly touching--as of an
involuntary confession of almost unbearable loneliness--in the way
she had regained, with her re-entry into the clear air of American
associations, her own fresh trustfulness of view. Once she had
accustomed herself to the surprise of finding her divorce unopposed,
she had been, as it now seemed to Durham, in almost too great haste
to renounce the habit of weighing motives and calculating chances.
It was as though her coming liberation had already freed her from
the garb of a mental slavery, as though she could not too soon or
too conspicuously cast off the ugly badge of suspicion. The fact
that Durham's cleverness had achieved so easy a victory over forces
apparently impregnable, merely raised her estimate of that
cleverness to the point of letting her feel that she could rest in
it without farther demur. He