ok unheeded beneath the other on the table,
when the door opened again behind him, and Sheila entered. She stood for
a moment, calm and dignified, looking down on him through her veil.

'Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in pique,
or even in anger. It would serve no purpose to go on like this--this
incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have been mistakes,
misconceptions, perhaps, on both sides. To me naturally yours are most
conspicuous. That need not, however, blind me to my own.'

She paused in vain for an answer.

'Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly,' she began again in a
quiet rapid voice. 'Have you really shown the slightest regard, I won't
say for me, or even for Alice, but for just the obvious difficulties
and--and proprieties of our position? I have given up as far as I
can brooding on and on over the same horrible impossible thoughts. I
withdraw unreservedly what I said just now about punishment. Whatever
the evidence, it is not even a wife's place to judge like that. You will
forgive me that?'

Lawford did not turn his head. 'Of course,' he said, looking rather
vacantly out of the window, 'it was only in the heat of the moment,
Sheila; though, who knows? it may be true.'

'Well,' she took hold of the great brass knob at the foot of the bed
with one gloved hand--'well, I feel it is my duty to withdraw it. Apart
from it, I see only too clearly that even though all that has happened
in these last few days was in reality nothing but a horrible nightmare,
I see that even then what you have said about our married life together
can never be recalled. You have told me quite deliberately that for
years past your life has been nothing but a pretence--a sham. You
implied that mine had been too. Honestly, I was not aware of it, Arthur.
But supposing all that has happened to you had been merely what might
happen at any moment to anybody, some actual defacement (you will
forgive me suggesting such a horrible thing)--why, if what you say is
true, even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual
fret and annoyance to you. And this--this change, I own, is infinitely
harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all that
we hold seemly and--and sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You
do, you must see all that, Arthur?'

'Oh yes,' said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the
sunlight, 'I see all that.'

'Then we need not go ov