well wonder
why she didn't take Captain Ehrhardt after you dismissed him."

"_I_ dismissed him?"

"You wrote to him, didn't you?"

"Celia," cried Elmore, "this I _cannot_ bear. Did I take a single step
in that business without her request and your full approval? Didn't you
both ask me to write?"

"Yes, I suppose we did."

"Suppose?"

"Well, we _did_,--if you want me to say it. And I'm not accusing you of
anything. I know you acted for the best. But you can see yourself, can't
you, that it was rather sudden to have it end so quickly--"

She did not finish her sentence, or he did not hear the close in the
miserable absence into which he lapsed. "Celia," he asked at last, "do
you think she--she had any feeling about him?"

"Oh," cried his wife restively, "how should _I_ know?"

"I didn't suppose you _knew_," he pleaded. "I asked if you thought so."

"What would be the use of thinking anything about it? The matter can't
be helped now. If you inferred from anything she said to you--"

"She told me repeatedly, in answer to questions as explicit as I could
make them, that she wished him dismissed."

"Well, then, very likely she did."

"Very likely, Celia?"

"Yes. At any rate, it's too late now."

"Yes, it's too late now." He was silent again, and he began to walk the
floor, after his old habit, without speaking. He was always mute when he
was in pain, and he startled her with the anguish in which he now broke
forth. "I give it up! I give it up! Celia, Celia, I'm afraid I did
wrong! Yes, I'm afraid that I spoiled two lives. I ventured to lay my
sacrilegious hands upon two hearts that a divine force was drawing
together, and put them asunder. It was a lamentable blunder,--it was a
crime!"

"Why, Owen, how strangely you talk! How could you have done any
differently under the circumstances?"

"Oh, I could have done very differently. I might have seen him, and
talked with him brotherly, face to face. He was a fearless and generous
soul! And I was meanly scared for my wretched little decorums, for my
responsibility to her friends, and I gave him no chance."

"We wouldn't let you give him any," interrupted his wife.

"Don't try to deceive yourself, don't try to deceive _me_, Celia! I know
well enough that you would have been glad to have me show mercy; and I
would not even show him the poor grace of passing his offer in silence,
if I must refuse it. I couldn't spare him even so much as that!"

"We decided--w