hat pass for ever from your mind. I know that I should
do the same, yes, even a hundred times. I did according to my nature.
Thee must not now be punished cruelly for a thing thee did not do.
Silence is the only way of safety or of justice. We must not speak of
this again. We must each go our own way."

Her eyes were moist. She reached out a hand to him timidly. "Oh, forgive
me," she added brokenly, "I am so vain, so selfish, and that makes one
blind to the truth. It is all clearer now. You have shown me that I was
right in my first impulse, and that is all I can say for myself. I shall
pray all my life that it will do you no harm in the end."

She remained silent, for a moment adjusting her veil, preparing to go.
Presently she spoke again: "I shall always want to know about you--what
is happening to you. How could it be otherwise?"

She was half realising one of the deepest things in existence, that the
closest bond between two human beings is a bond of secrecy upon a thing
which vitally, fatally concerns both or either. It is a power at once
malevolent and beautiful. A secret like that of David and Hylda will
do in a day what a score of years could not accomplish, will insinuate
confidences which might never be given to the nearest or dearest. In
neither was any feeling of the heart begotten by their experiences; and
yet they had gone deeper in each other's lives than any one either
had known in a lifetime. They had struck a deeper note than love or
friendship. They had touched the chord of a secret and mutual experience
which had gone so far that their lives would be influenced by it for
ever after. Each understood this in a different way.

Hylda looked towards the letter lying on the table. It had raised in
her mind, not a doubt, but an undefined, undefinable anxiety. He saw the
glance, and said: "I was writing to one who has been as a sister to me.
She was my mother's sister though she is almost as young as I. Her name
is Faith. There is nothing there of what concerns thee and me, though
it would make no difference if she knew." Suddenly a thought seemed to
strike him. "The secret is of thee and me. There is safety. If it became
another's, there might be peril. The thing shall be between us only, for
ever?"

"Do you think that I--"

"My instinct tells me a woman of sensitive mind might one day, out of an
unmerciful honesty, tell her husband--"

"I am not married-"

"But one day--"

She interrupted him. "