g of the thing, lest he should thereby learn it.

"I suppose then you have your own theory as to my reasons for seeking
shelter with Miss Drake for a while?" she said--and the moment she said
it, felt as if some demon had betrayed her, and used her organs to utter
the words.

"If I have, ma'am," answered Polwarth, "it is for myself alone. I know
the sacredness of married life too well to speculate irreverently on its
affairs. I believe that many an awful crisis of human history is there
passed--such, I presume, as God only sees and understands. The more
carefully such are kept from the common eye and the common judgment, the
better, I think."

If Juliet left him with yet a little added fear, it was also with
growing confidence, and some comfort, which the feeble presence of an
infant humility served to enlarge.

Polwarth had not given much thought to the question of the cause of
their separation. That was not of his business. What he could not well
avoid seeing was, that it could hardly have taken place since their
marriage. He had at once, as a matter of course, concluded that it lay
with the husband, but from what he had since learned of Juliet's
character, he knew she had not the strength either of moral opinion or
of will to separate, for any reason past and gone, from the husband she
loved so passionately; and there he stopped, refusing to think further.
For he found himself on the verge of thinking what, in his boundless
respect for women, he shrank with deepest repugnance from entertaining
even as a transient flash of conjecture.

One trifle I will here mention, as admitting laterally a single ray of
light upon Polwarth's character. Juliet had come to feel some desire to
be useful in the house beyond her own room, and descrying not only dust,
but what she judged disorder in her _landlord's_ little library--for
such she chose to consider him--which, to her astonishment in such a
mere cottage, consisted of many more books than her husband's, and ten
times as many readable ones, she offered to dust and rearrange them
properly: Polwarth instantly accepted her offer, with thanks--which were
solely for the kindness of the intent, he could not possibly be grateful
for the intended result--and left his books at her mercy. I do not know
another man who, loving his books like Polwarth, would have done so.
Every book had its own place. He could--I speak advisedly--have laid his
hand on any book of at least three hundre