each say to the
other are said in the pauses. Then Frida relapsed once more into speech:
"But what about the children?" she asked rather timidly.

Bertram looked puzzled. "Why, what about the children?" he repeated in a
curious way. "What difference on earth could that make to the children?"

"Can I bring them with me, I mean?" Frida asked, a little tremulous for
the reply. "I couldn't bear to leave them. Even for you, dear Bertram, I
could never desert them."

Bertram gazed at her dismayed. "Leave them!" he cried. "Why, Frida, of
course you could never leave them. Do you mean to say anybody would be
so utterly unnatural, even in England, as to separate a mother from her
own children?"

"I don't think Robert would let me keep them," Frida faltered, with
tears in her eyes; "and if he didn't, the law, of course, would take his
side against me."

"Of course!" Bertram answered, with grim sarcasm in his face, "of
course! I might have guessed it. If there IS an injustice or a barbarity
possible, I might have been sure the law of England would make haste
to perpetrate it. But you needn't fear, Frida. Long before the law of
England could be put in motion, I'll have completed my arrangements for
taking you--and them too--with me. There are advantages sometimes even
in the barbaric delay of what your lawyers are facetiously pleased to
call justice."

"Then I may bring them with me?" Frida cried, flushing red.

Bertram nodded assent. "Yes," he said, with grave gentleness. "You may
bring them with you. And as soon as you like, too. Remember, dearest,
every night you pass under that creature's roof, you commit the vilest
crime a woman can commit against her own purity."

XI

Never in her life had Frida enjoyed anything so much as those first four
happy days at Heymoor. She had come away with Bertram exactly as Bertram
himself desired her to do, without one thought of anything on earth
except to fulfil the higher law of her own nature; and she was happy in
her intercourse with the one man who could understand it, the one
man who had waked it to its fullest pitch, and could make it resound
sympathetically to his touch in every chord and every fibre. They had
chosen a lovely spot on a heather-clad moorland, where she could stroll
alone with Bertram among the gorse and ling, utterly oblivious of Robert
Monteith and the unnatural world she had left for ever behind her.
Her soul drank in deep draughts of the knowledge o