moral atmosphere to which he could never
attain--to end in this story! The effect of it, on herself, rather than
on him, was what she had not foreseen.

Aldous raised himself slowly.

"And when did this happen?" he asked after a moment.

"I told you--the night of the ball--of the murder," she said with a
shiver; "we saw Hurd cross the avenue. I meant to have told you
everything at once."

"And you gave up that intention?" he asked her, when he had waited a
little for more, and nothing came.

She turned upon him with a flash of the old defiance.

"How could I think of my own affairs?"

"Or of mine?" he said bitterly.

She made no answer.

Aldous got up and walked to the chimney-piece. He was very pale, but his
eyes were bright and sparkling. When she looked up at him at last she
saw that her task was done. His scorn--his resentment--were they not the
expiation, the penalty she had looked forward to all along?--and with
that determination to bear them calmly? Yet, now that they were there in
front of her, they stung.

"So that--for all those weeks--while you were letting me write as I did,
while you were letting me conceive you and your action as I did, you had
this on your mind? You never gave me a hint; you let me plead; you let
me regard you as wrapped up in the unselfish end; you sent me those
letters of his--those most misleading letters!--and all the time--"

"But I meant to tell you--I always meant to tell you," she cried
passionately. "I would never have gone on with a secret like that--not
for your sake--but for my own."

"Yet you did go on so long," he said steadily; "and my agony of mind
during those weeks--my feeling towards you--my--"

He broke off, wrestling with himself. As for her, she had fallen back in
her chair, physically incapable of anything more.

He walked over to her side and took up his hat.

"You have done me wrong," he said, gazing down upon her. "I pray God you
may not do yourself a greater wrong in the future! Give me leave to
write to you once more, or to send my friend Edward Hallin to see you.
Then I will not trouble you again."

He waited, but she could give him no answer. Her form as she lay there
in this physical and moral abasement printed itself upon his heart. Yet
he felt no desire whatever to snatch the last touch--the last kiss--that
wounded passion so often craves. Inwardly, and without words, he said
farewell to her. She heard his steps across the room; the d