red?"

"Nothing in a hurry," he answered slowly. "We paid too dearly for that
last time."

"But, _mon cher_ . . . we have waited five whole years."

"That is just the difficulty. Five years of overwork and bitterness of
spirit are not to be wiped out in a single hour; even such an hour as
this. The man you married had not gone through the fire, and been
badly burned in the process."

He paused. The irony of their reversed positions stung him to the
quick, and she sat watching his face. The pallor of moonlight
intensified its ruggedness, its deep indentations of cheek and brow.
She began to be aware that the dropped stitches of life cannot always
be picked up again at will; that there is no tyrant more pitiless than
the Past; and a vague dread took hold of her, sealing her lips.

"We have got to look facts in the face to-night," Lenox went on with
the doggedness of his race. "I'm a poor hand at discussing myself.
It's an unprofitable subject. But I can't let you rush headlong into a
reunion that may prove disastrous . . . for you. To-night's revelation
has astounded me. It isn't easy to get one's bearings all at once; but
before we take any further irretrievable step I am bound, in
conscience, to tell you how the land lies. When you--repudiated me, I
accepted your decision as final. I never dreamed of your coming back;
and I acted accordingly. I took to work as I might have taken to
drink, if I had been made that way; with the natural result that
I . . . smoked a great deal too much, and slept too little. I saw no
earthly reason to husband my strength, or my life; and in consequence,
I have gained something of a reputation for tackling dangerous and
difficult jobs. There's plenty more work of the kind ahead, with the
forward policy in full swing; and one can't go back on all that has
been done. You see that, don't you?"

"Yes. But couldn't I ever go with you?"

He smiled. "I believe you have grit enough! But it would be unheard
of. Besides . . . there is another trouble, and a very serious one,
blocking the way."

"You will tell me what it is?"

He did not answer at once. To blacken himself deliberately in the eyes
of the woman he loves is no light ordeal for a man; and Lenox shrank
from it with the peculiar sensitiveness of a nature at once humble and
proud; the more so since to-night had brought home to him the
heart-breaking truth that in "the devil's wedlock of evil and pain" one
can n