lived. Yet it was she, and
she only, who was causing him this pain, who was destroying his
happiness and breaking his heart.

She dared not speak nor move. It took all the strength she drew from
silence to keep her from breaking into a more terrible storm of grief
than even that into which he had fallen. She dared not make a sign, but
simply stood there, doing her best to bear her heavy burden to the end.
The only feeling that she had for herself was that it was cruel not to
let her die, and why did not mute anguish kill her?

For the rest, she knew that she had done the thing that was right,
however hard. It was not fitting that she should be his wife; and it was
better that he should suffer for the moment than be degraded for all
time by association with one so shameful, so dishonored, as herself.

Presently, Edgar cleared his eyes and lifted up his face. He was angry
with himself for this unmanly burst of feeling, and because angry with
himself disposed for the moment to be hard on her. She was standing
there in exactly the same spot and just the same attitude as before, her
head a little bent, her hands twined in each other, her eyes with the
pleading, frightened look of confession turned timidly to him; but as he
raised himself from the sofa, pushing back his hair and striding to the
window as if to hide the fact of his having shed tears, she turned her
eyes to the floor. She was beginning to feel now that she must not even
look at him. The gulf that separated them, dug by her own ineffaceable
crime, was so deep, the distance so wide!

A painful silence fell between them: then Edgar, not looking at her,
said in a constrained voice, "I will keep your dreadful secret, Leam,
sacredly for ever. You feel sure of that, I hope. But, as you say, we
must part. I do not pretend to be better than other men, but I could not
take as my wife one who had been guilty of such an awful crime as this."

"No," said Leam, her parched lips scarcely able to form a word at all.

"Your secret will be safe with me," he repeated.

She did not reply. In giving up himself she had given up all that made
life lovely, and the refuse might as well go as not.

"But we must part."

"Yes," said Leam.

He turned back to the window, desperately troubled. He did really love
her, passionately, sincerely. He longed at this very moment to take her
in his arms and tell her that he would accept her crime if only he might
have herself. Had he not b