ent of this life with you with the thought for a moment in
my mind that you would institute a close vigil over all my actions?"

"It was only because I knew you were being deceived," she said
brokenly.

"How being deceived? By whom?"

"By your sister."

"How has she deceived me?" He forced her eyes to his. "How?" he
repeated.

To defend her case, just as the woman in the Courts had done, she
told him of what Devenish had said; notwithstanding that she herself
had pleaded with Devenish to repeat nothing of what had passed
between them. Then, in the cold glittering of his eyes, she saw how
she had doubly wronged her cause.

"So you speak to outsiders," he said quietly, "about the things which
I have told you in confidence. My God! It's well that you and I are
not married; well for you and well for me that we haven't to smirch
our names in order to get the release of a divorce."

"Divorce?"

"Yes. Great heavens! Do you think I'm going to live on with you now?
Do you think I'm going to be followed in all my actions--tracked,
trapped--and dandle the private detective on my knee?"

"Ah, but Jack!" She flung arms around his neck, her head bent close
to his chest. "I was jealous--can't you see that? I was jealous of
that girl."

He put her firmly away from him. "Oh, that be damned for a tale!"
he exclaimed.

She shuddered. She had sought for pity--the last hope. In his voice
there was none. If only she had had some one to guide her, some one
to show her that it would all lead to this. She would have held him
longer; she would still have held him, had she not given way to let
jealousy wrestle with her soul, flinging it at his feet for him to
trample on. Whatever had been the attitude of his mind before, she
had afforded him no reason to leave her. Now there was cause--cause
enough. She could only see the enormity of her guilt with his eyes,
so completely did he dominate her. That a thousand circumstances had
mitigated her action, had goaded her, as the unwilling beast is
driven through the noise and smoke of battle, until, in the fury of
fear, it plunges headlong towards the murderous cannonade--that
these things should be taken into account did not enter her
conception of the situation. She had wronged him. That was all she
felt. And now, clutching his hand, raising it to her lips, drenching
it with her tears and kisses, she begged his forgiveness, humbling
herself down to the very dust.

He took his hand away