hat might she not tell him?
She loosed her hands from his and lifted them to his shoulders, and that
was the first conscious action of feeling, of intimacy, which she had
ever shown. It quite robbed Shefford of strength, and in spite of his
sorrow there was an indefinable thrill in her touch. He looked at her,
saw the white-and-gold beauty that was hers yesterday and seemed changed
to-day, and he recognized Fay Larkin in a woman he did not know.

"Listen! He came--"

"Fay, don't--tell me," interrupted Shefford.

"I WILL tell you," she said.

Did the instinct of love teach her how to mitigate his pain? Shefford
felt that, as he felt the new-born strength in her.

"Listen," she went on. "He came when I was undressing for bed. I heard
the horse. He knocked on the door. Something terrible happened to me
then. I felt sick and my head wasn't clear. I remember next--his being
in the room--the lamp was out--I couldn't see very well. He thought I
was sick and he gave me a drink and let the air blow in on me through
the window. I remember I lay back in the chair and I thought. And I
listened. When would you come? I didn't feel that you could leave me
there alone with him. For his coming was different this time. That pain
like a blade in my side!... When it came I was not the same. I loved
you. I understood then. I belonged to you. I couldn't let him touch me.
I had never been his wife. When I realized this--that he was there, that
you might suffer for it--I cried right out.

"He thought I was sick. He worked over me. He gave me medicine. And then
he prayed. I saw him, in the dark, on his knees, praying for me. That
seemed strange. Yet he was kind, so kind that I begged him to let me go.
I was not a Mormon. I couldn't marry him. I begged him to let me go.

"Then he thought I had been deceiving him. He fell into a fury. He
talked for a long time. He called upon God to visit my sins upon me. He
tried to make me pray. But I wouldn't. And then I fought him. I'd have
screamed for you had he not smothered me. I got weak.... And you never
came. I know I thought you would come. But you didn't. Then I--I gave
out. And after--some time--I must have fainted."

"Fay! For Heaven's sake, how could I come to you?" burst out Shefford,
hoarse and white with remorse, passion, pain.

"If I'm any man's wife I'm yours. It's a thing you FEEL, isn't it? I
know that now.... But I want to know what to do?"

"Fay!" he cried, huskily.

"I'm sic