as possible?"

"I cannot blame you."

"Before you say that, listen to as much as I can tell you of the
story. I was a young girl when I went out alone to be married to him
in India. We had parted in England eight months before, and he had
remained unchanged--his letters all told the same tale. I quarrelled
with my mother--as I now see most unreasonably--merely because she
wished to marry again. Perhaps she was a little to blame not to be
more patient with a headstrong, ill-regulated girl. I was both. It
ended in my writing out to him in India that I should come out and
marry him at once. My mother made no opposition." She remained silent
for a little, and her eyes fell. Then she spoke with more effort,
rather as one who answers her own thoughts. "No, I need say nothing of
the time between. It was no excuse for the wrong I did _him_. I can
tell you what that was...." It did not seem easy, though, when it came
to actual words. Fenwick spoke into the pause.

"Why tell me now? Tell me another time."

"I prefer now. It was this way: I kept something back from him till
after we were married--something I should have told him before. Had I
done so, I believe to this moment we should never have parted. But my
concealment threw doubt on all else I said.... I am telling more than
I meant to tell." She hesitated again, and then went on. "That was my
wrong to him--the concealment. But, of course, it was not the ground
of the divorce proceedings." Fenwick stopped her again.

"Why tell me any more? You are being led on--are leading yourself
on--to say more than you wish."

"Well, I will leave it there. Only, Fenwick, understand this: my
husband was young and generous and noble-hearted. Had I trusted him,
I believe all might have gone well, even though he...." She hesitated
again, and then cancelled something unsaid. "The concealment was my
fault--the mistrust. That was all. Nothing else was my _fault_." As
she says the words in praise of her husband she finds it a pleasure
to let her eyes rest on the grave, handsome, puzzled face that, after
all, really is _his_. She catches herself wondering--so oddly do the
undercurrents of mind course about--where he got that sharp white scar
across his nose. It was not there in the old days.

She looks at him until he, too, looks up, and their eyes meet. "Well,
then," she says, "I will tell you no more. Blame me as little as
possible." And to this repetition of her previous words he says