ne save for the living
flame of the gas, the sense of the tragedy, and of the responsibility
for it, and especially her responsibility, the sense of an imposed
burden to be grimly borne and of an unknown destiny to be worked out,
the sense of pity, the sense of youth and force,--these things gradually
exalted her and ennobled her desolation.

"Why did you keep it from me?" she asked in a very clear and precise
tone, not aggrieved, but fatalistic and melancholy.

"Keep what from you?" At length he met her eyes, darkly.

"All this about your being married."

"Why did I keep it from you?" he repeated harshly, and then his tone
changed from defiance to a softened regret: "I'll tell you why I kept it
from you! Because I knew if I told you I should have no chance with a
girl like you. I knew it'd be all up--if I so much as breathed a hint of
it! I don't suppose you've the slightest idea how stand-offish you are!"

"Me stand-offish!" she protested.

"Look here!" he said persuasively. "Supposing I'd told you I wanted you,
and then that I'd got a wife living--what would you have said?"

"I don't know."

"No! But _I_ know! And suppose I'd told you I'd got a wife living and
then told you I wanted you--what then? No, Hilda! Nobody could fool
about with you!"

She was flattered, but she thought secretly: "He could have won me on
any terms he liked!... I wonder whether he _could_ have won me on any
terms!... That first night in this house, when we were in the front
attic--suppose he'd told me then--I wonder! What should I have said?"
But the severity of her countenance was a perfect mask for such weak and
uncertain ideas, and confirmed him deeply in his estimate of her.

He continued:

"Now that first night in this house, upstairs!" He jerked his head
towards the ceiling. She blushed, not from any shame, but because his
thought had surprised hers. "I was as near as dammit to letting out the
whole thing and chancing it with you. But I didn't--I saw it'd be no
use. And that's not the only time either!"

She stood silent by the dressing-table, calmly looking at him, and she
asked herself, eagerly curious: "When were the other times?"

"Of course it's all my fault!" he said.

"What is?"

"This!... All my fault! I don't want to excuse myself. I've nothing to
say for myself."

In her mind she secretly interrupted him: "Yes, you have. You couldn't
do without me--isn't that enough?"

"I'm ashamed!" he said, without rese