sible comedy
played around him. Why should he resist, or examine its ethics too
closely? He offered his arm to Susy as they descended the stairs, but,
instead of pausing in the supper-room, she simply passed through it with
a significant pressure on his arm, and, drawing aside a muslin curtain,
stepped into the moonlit conservatory. Behind the curtain there was a
small rustic settee; without releasing his arm she sat down, so that
when he dropped beside her, their hands met, and mutually clasped.

"Now, Kla'uns," she said, with a slight, comfortable shiver as she
nestled beside him, "it's a little like your chair down at old Robles,
isn't it?--tell me! And to think it's five years ago! But, Kla'uns,
what's the matter? You are changed," she said, looking at his dark face
in the moonlight, "or you have something to tell me."

"I have."

"And it's something dreadful, I know!" she said, wrinkling her brows
with a pretty terror. "Couldn't you pretend you had told it to me, and
let us go on just the same? Couldn't you, Kla'uns? Tell me!"

"I am afraid I couldn't," he said, with a sad smile.

"Is it about yourself, Kla'uns? You know," she went on with cheerful
rapidity, "I know everything about you--I always did, you know--and I
don't care, and never did care, and it don't, and never did, make the
slightest difference to me. So don't tell it, and waste time, Kla'uns."

"It's not about me, but about my wife!" he said slowly.

Her expression changed slightly

"Oh, her!" she said after a pause. Then, half-resignedly, "Go on,
Kla'uns."

He began. He had a dozen times rehearsed to himself his miserable story,
always feeling it keenly, and even fearing that he might be carried away
by emotion or morbid sentiment in telling it to another. But, to his
astonishment, he found himself telling it practically, calmly, almost
cynically, to his old playmate, repressing the half devotion and even
tenderness that had governed him, from the time that his wife, disguised
as the mulatto woman, had secretly watched him at his office, to the
hour that he had passed through the lines. He withheld only the incident
of Miss Faulkner's complicity and sacrifice.

"And she got away, after having kicked you out of your place, Kla'uns?"
said Susy, when he had ended.

Clarence stiffened beside her. But he felt he had gone too far to
quarrel with his confidante.

"She went away. I honestly believe we shall never meet again, or I
should not be