is heart he hoped that she would refuse to; yet he
dreaded lest he should be told that she was too unwell. It was a new
thing in Wilfrid's experience to approach any door with shame and dread;
between his ringing the bell and the servant's answer he learnt 'well
what those words mean.

He was admitted as usual, the servant making no remark. As usual, he was
led to Beatrice's room.

She was sitting in the chair she always occupied, and was dressed with
the accustomed perfection. But her face was an index to the sufferings
she had endured this past week. As soon as the door had closed, she
stood to receive him, but not with extended hand. Her eyes were fixed
upon him steadily, and Wilfrid, with difficulty meeting them,
experienced a shook of new fear, a kind of fear he could not account
for. Outwardly she was quite calm; it was something in her look, an
indefinable suggestion of secret anguish, that impressed him so. He did
not try to take her hand, but, having laid down his hat, came near to
her and spoke as quietly as he could.

'May I speak to you of what passed between us last Monday?'

'How can we avoid speaking of it?' she replied, in a low voice, her eyes
still searching him.

'I ought to have come to see you before this,' Wilfrid continued, taking
the seat to which she pointed, whilst she also sat down. 'I could not.'

'I have been expecting you,' Beatrice said, in an emotionless way.

The nervous tension with which he had come into her presence had yielded
to a fit of trembling. Coldness ran along his veins; his tongue refused
its office; his eyes sank before her gaze.

'I felt sure you would come to-day,' Beatrice continued, with the same
absence of pronounced feeling. 'If not, I must have gone to your house.
What do you wish to say to me?'

'That which I find it very difficult to say. I feel that after what
happened on Monday we cannot be quite the same to each other. I fear I
said some things that were not wholly true.'

Beatrice seemed to be holding her breath. Her face was marble. She sat
unmoving.

'You mean,' she said at length, 'that those letters represented more
than you were willing to confess?'

It was calmly asked. Evidently Wilfrid had no outbreak of resentment to
fear. He would have preferred it to this dreadful self-command.

'More,' he answered, 'than I felt at the time. I spoke no word of
conscious falsehood.'

'Has anything happened to prove to you what you then denied?'

He