m an intolerable
position.

The war broke out, and Hugh Elwyn was among the very first of those
gallant fellows who volunteered during the dark November of '99.

By a curious irony of fate, the troopship that bore him to South Africa
had Bellair also on board, but owing to Elwyn's secret decision--he was
far the cleverer man of the two--he and his friend were no longer bound
together by that wordless intimacy which is the basis of any close tie
among men. By the time the two came back from Africa they had become
little more than cordial acquaintances. Marriage, so Bellair sometimes
told himself ruefully, generally plays the devil with a man's bachelor
friendships. He was a kindly, generous hearted soul, who found much
comfort in platitudes....

But that, alas! had not been the end. On Elwyn's return home there had
come to him a violent, overmastering revival of his passion. Again he
and Fanny met--again they loved. Then one terrible day she came and told
him, with stricken eyes, what he sometimes hoped, even now, had not been
true--that she was about to have a child, and that it would be his
child. At that moment, as he knew well, Mrs. Bellair had desired
ardently to go away with him, openly. But he had drawn back, assuring
himself--and this time honestly--that his shrinking from that course,
now surely the only honest course, was not wholly ignoble. Were he to do
such a thing it would go far to kill his mother--worse, it would
embitter every moment of the life which remained to her.

For a while Elwyn went in deadly fear lest Fanny should tell her husband
the truth. But the weeks and months drifted by, and she remained silent.
And as he had gone about that year, petted and made much of by his
friends and acquaintances--for did he not bear on his worn, handsome
face that look which war paints on the face of your sensitive modern
man?--he heard whispered the delightful news that after five years of
marriage kind Jim and dear Fanny Bellair were at last going to be made
happy--happy in the good old way.

Among the other memories of that hateful time, one came back, to-night,
with especial vividness. Hurrying home across the park one afternoon,
seven years ago now, almost to a day, he had suddenly run up against
Bellair.

They had talked for a few moments on indifferent things, and then Jim
had said shyly, awkwardly, but with a beaming look on his face, "You
know about Fanny? Of course I can't help feeling a bit anxi