that
conscience which she had always regarded, vaguely but earnestly, as in
some sort the voice of God? Would she ever say that she herself had been
an ignorant little fool in her judgment of men and men's temptations,
and laugh at herself for her narrowness and the limitation of her view?
Would she come to renounce her high ideal, and content herself with what
was merely expedient and comfortable and "like other people"? In that
day, it seemed to Nan that she will be selling her own soul.

No, the way out of the present difficulty was not easy. She could tell
Sydney that she loved him, but not that she thought him anything but
wrong--wrong from beginning to end in the conduct of his past life. And
would he be content with a love that condemned him? How easy it would be
for her to love and forgive him if only he would give her one little
sign by which to know that he himself was conscious of the blackness of
that past! Repentance would show at least that there was no twist in his
conscience, no flaw in his ethical constitution; it would set him right
with the universe, if not with himself. For the moment there was nothing
Nan so passionately desired as to hear him own himself in the wrong--not
for any personal satisfaction so much as for his own sake; also that she
might then put him upon a higher pedestal than ever, and worship him as
a woman is always able to worship the man who has sinned and repented,
rather than the man who has never fallen from his high estate; to
rejoice over him as angels rejoice over the penitent more than over the
just that need no repentance.

* * * * *

Sydney was a good deal startled when his wife said to him a few days
later, in rather a timid way:

"Your sister has never been here. May I ask her to come and see me?"

"Certainly, if you wish it." He had not come to approve of Lettice's
course of action, but he did not wish his disapproval to be patent to
the world.

"I do wish it very much."

Sydney glanced at her quickly, but she did not look back at him. She
only said:

"I have her address. I will ask her to come to-morrow afternoon."

"Very well."

So Nan wrote her note, and Lettice came.

As it happened, the two had never met. Lettice's preoccupation with her
own affairs, Sydney's first resentment, now wearing off, and Nan's
subsequent illness, had combined to prevent their forming any
acquaintance. But the two women had no sooner clasped ha