ve done the things I want to do.

"Of course you will be angry--it is so unexpected. But only
think--you would not be angry, would you, if I married? You
would have considered that perfectly legitimate. Yet it would
have meant my leaving you for good. And what marriage and
settling down in it is to other women, seeing the world and
wandering about in it is to me--it's the thing I care for most.
We do not talk about these things, so this is the first you have
heard of it. Think--if I had been very much in love with anyone
I would have said nothing about it till I was all but engaged to
him. It's the same thing. And it will make less difference to
you than my marriage would have made."

Here Frida's pen had come to a stop; with a sudden flight from the
abstract to the concrete, she had begun a fresh argument on a fresh
page.

"I only mean to use a third of my income. The other two thousand
will still go to keeping up the property. I have left everything
so that my work could be taken up by anybody to-morrow."

The Colonel's eyes had dogged Durant's down to the bottom of the
sheet, when he made a nervous attempt to recapture the letter. It
was too late; the swing of Frida's impassioned pleading had carried
Durant over the page, and one terse sentence had printed itself
instantaneously on his brain. He handed back the letter without a
word.

The Colonel drew Durant's arm in his and led him out through the
window on to the gravel drive. Up and down, up and down, they walked
for the space of one hour, while the Colonel poured out his soul. He
went bareheaded, he lifted up his face to the heavens, touched to a
deeper anguish by the beauty of the young day.

"Lord, what a perfect morning! Look at this place she's left; look
at it! I've nursed the little property for her; it was as much hers
as if I was in my grave, Durant. She's lived in it for nearly thirty
years, ever since she was no higher than that flower-pot, and she
thinks nothing of leaving it. She thinks nothing of leaving _me_.
And I've got more work to do than my brain's fit for; why I was in
the very thick of my Primrose League correspondence, up to the neck
in all manner of accounts; and she knew it, and chose this time.
I've got to give a lecture next week in Whithorn parish-room, a
lecture on 'Imperialism,' and I've my little chronicle on hand, too;
but it's nothing to her. The whole thing's a mystery to me. I can't
think what