d alter it. Quisante was stopped in mid-career by a short
sharp sob that escaped from his wife's lips. He turned and looked at her,
breaking off the sentence that he had begun. She met his glance with a
frightened look in her eyes.

"What's the matter?" he asked slowly, rather resentfully.

"Nothing, nothing," she stammered. "I--I was excited by what you were
saying." She tried to laugh. "I'm emotional, you know, and you can always
rouse my emotions."

"Was it that?" For a moment longer he sat upright, looking hard at her;
then his body relaxed, and he lay back, his lower lip dropping and his
eyes half closed. An expression of great weariness and despair came over
him. He had read the meaning of her sob; and now he hid his face in his
hands. His pretences failed him, and he was assailed by the bitterness of
truth and of death.

She rose, saying, "It's late, we must go in; you'll be over-tired."

After an instant Quisante rose slowly and falteringly; he laid his arm in
hers, and they stood side by side, gazing down into the valley. This hill
had come to mean much in their lives, and somehow now they seemed to be
saying good-bye to it.

"I could never forget this hill," she said, "any more than I could forget
you. You told me just now that I didn't love you. Well, as you mean it,
perhaps not. But you've been almost everything in the world to me.
Everything in the world isn't all good, but it's--everything." She turned
to him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek. "Lean on me as we go down
the hill," she said. There was pity and tenderness in the words and the
tone. But Quisante drew his arm sharply away and braced his body to
uprightness.

"I'm not tired. I can go quite well by myself. You look more tired than I
do," he said. "Come, we shall be late," and he set off down the hill at a
brisk pace.

Her appeal then had failed; this last little incident told her that with
unpitying plainness. If he had yielded for a moment before the face of
reality, he soon recovered himself, turned away from the sight, and went
back to his masquerading. She lacked the power to lead him from it, and
again she feared that she lacked the power because her will was not
sincere and single. Now they must go on to that uncertain end, he playing
his part before the world, before her and Aunt Maria, she looking on,
sometimes in admiration, sometimes in contempt, always in fear of the
moment when the actor's speeches would be suddenly cut sh