--cowardice and desertion. Get up
now and leave me alone, please. It's the greatest kindness you can do
me; and yourself also, I imagine."

"Oh, don't say that. It's not true; and I'm not going to dream of
leaving you. Won't you let me explain?"

"To-morrow, Evelyn, to-morrow," he answered wearily. "I shall be able
to give you a fairer hearing by then; and I pray God I may have
misjudged you. Now--go."

She bent down and kissed his hand; then rose and slipped silently back
into her own room.

* * * * *

Theo Desmond lay motionless, like a man stunned. This third blow,
dealt him in quick succession, left him broken in heart and spirit, as
he had never been broken in all his days.

It is written that a man must be defeated in order to succeed; and in
that moment Desmond bit the dust of the heart's most poignant tragedy
and defeat--the shattering of faith in one who is very near to us. Nor
was it the shattering of faith alone. The shock of his wife's
unwitting revelation, coming when he stood supremely in need of her
loyalty and tenderness, struck a mortal blow at his love for her;
though in his present state he was not capable of recognising the
truth. He only knew that, for the first time in his life, he felt
unutterably alone--alone in a dimness which might deepen to permanent
darkness; and that the wholesome vigorous realities of life seemed to
have slipped for ever out of reach. He only knew that his wife would
have turned her back upon him in his hour of extremity--openly
disgracing herself and him--but for the intervention of Honor
Meredith.

Her mere name called up a vivid vision of her beauty, a remembrance of
the infinite compassion in her voice when she had knelt beside him,
soothing and strengthening him by some miracle of womanly intuition,
urging him to make allowance for his wife's distress.

A sudden glow thrilled through him from head to foot. He stirred
slightly; and tried, without success, to turn in his chair. It was as
if the compelling spirit of her had dragged him back from the brink
of nothingness to renewed life, to the assurance that in his utmost
loneliness he was not--nor ever would be--alone. And, in that moment
of awakening, the voice of sympathy came to him--tender, uplifting,
clear as speech.

Honor Meredith had begun to play.

By way of prelude she chose a piece of pure organ music--the
exquisitely simple Largo of the Second Sonata. From that she