e both decided--that it would be better to cut off all
hope at once," urged his wife.

"Ah, it was I who decided that--decided everything. Leave me to deal
honestly with myself at last, Celia! I have tried long enough to believe
that it was not I who did it!" The pent-up doubt of years, the
long-silenced self-accusal, burst forth in his words. "Oh, I have
suffered for it! I thought he must come back, somehow, as long as we
stayed in Venice. When we left Peschiera without a glimpse of him--I
wonder I outlived it. But even if I had seen him there, what use would
it have been? Would I have tried to repair the wrong done? What did I do
but impute unmanly and impudent motives to him when he seized his chance
to see her once more at that masquerade--"

"No, no, Owen! He was not the one. Lily was satisfied of that long ago.
It was nothing but a chance, a coincidence. Perhaps it was some one he
had told about the affair--"

"No matter! no matter! If I thought it was he, my blame is the same. And
she, poor girl,--in my lying compassion for him, I used to accuse her of
cold-heartedness, of indifference! I wonder she did not abhor the sight
of me. How has she ever tolerated the presence, the friendship, of a man
who did her this irreparable wrong? Yes, it has spoiled her life, and it
was my work. No, no, Celia! you and she had nothing to do with it,
except as I forced your consent--it was my work; and, however I have
tried openly and secretly to shirk it, I must bear this fearful
responsibility."

He dropped into a chair, and hid his face in his hands, while his wife
soothed him with loving excuses for what he had done, with tender
protests against the exaggerations of his remorse. She said that he had
done the only thing he could do; that Lily wished it, and that she never
had blamed him. "Why, I don't believe she would ever have married
Captain Ehrhardt, anyhow. She was full of that silly fancy of hers about
Dick Burton, all the time,--you know how she used always to be talking
about him; and when she came home and found she had outgrown him, she
had to refuse him, and I suppose it's that that's made her rather
melancholy." She explained that Major Burton had become extremely fat,
that his moustache was too big and black, and his laugh too loud; there
was nothing left of him, in fact, but his empty sleeve, and Lily was too
conscientious to marry him merely for that.

In fact, Elmore's regret did reflect a monstrous and dist