le
dread mingled with his grief--his remorse. It had been there for months.
In her eyes would not only pain but sin divide them? Could he possibly
prevent her whole relation to him from altering and dwindling?

It was to be the problem of his remaining life. With a great cry of the
soul to that God it yearned and felt for through all the darkness and
ruin which encompassed it, he laid his hand on hers with the timidest
passing touch.

'Catherine, I will make amends! My wife, I will make amends!'

CHAPTER XXVII.

The next morning Catherine, finding that Robert still slept on, after
their usual waking time, and remembering his exhaustion of the night
before, left him softly, and kept the house quiet that he might not
be disturbed. She was in charge of the now toddling Mary in the
dinning-room, when the door opened and Robert appeared.

At sight of him she sprang up with a half-cry; the face seemed to have
lost all its fresh color, its look of sure and air: the eyes were sunk;
the lips and chin lined and drawn. It was like a face from which the
youth had suddenly been struck out.

'Robert!----' but her question died on her lips.

'A bad night, darling, and a bad headache,' he said, groping his way,
as it seemed to her, to the table, his hand leaning on her arm. 'Give me
some breakfast.'

She restrained herself at once, put him into an arm-chair by the window,
and cared for him in her tender, noiseless way. But she had grown almost
as pale as he, and her heart was like lead.

'Will you send me off for the day to Thurston ponds?' he said presently,
trying to smile with lips so stiff and nerveless that the will had small
control over them.

'Can you walk so far? You did overdo it yesterday, you know. You have
never got over Mile End, Robert.'

But her voice had a note in it which in his weakness he could hardly
bear. He thirsted to be alone again, to be able to think over quietly
what was best for her--for them both. There must be a next step, and in
her neighborhood, he was too feeble, too tortured, to decide upon it.

'No more, dear--no more,' he said, impatiently, as she tried to feed
him; then he added as he rose: 'Don't make arrangements for our going
next week, Catherine; it can't be so soon.'

Catherine looked at him with eyes of utter dismay. The sustaining hope
of all these difficult weeks, which had slipped with such terrible
unexpectedness into their happy life, was swept away from her.

'Robe