pale
darkness of the window, she closed her eyes again and lay breathing
quietly. "Why should I worry--it will all come right--everything will
come right if I have patience," she thought, trying to persuade herself
to sleep.

But she had no sooner shut her eyes than she began to live over again
the afternoon in Kemper's room; and her heart beat so high that she
heard the muffled sound under the coverlet "Why did Gerty look at me
so?" she asked. "Did she really look at me as if she were afraid, or was
it only my imagination?" From Gerty her excited thoughts flew back to
Kemper and it seemed to her that she had read scorn and suspicion in the
beaming glance he had thrown upon her--in the breathless apology of his
entrance. "Had he met her downstairs? Did he know all the time? and was
he only waiting for Gerty's absence to accuse me face to face of my
dishonesty? But it was a very little thing," she argued aloud, as if
justifying herself to a presence beside her bed, "it was such a little
thing that it had almost escaped my memory." Then, as she uttered the
words, she realised that the justification she attempted was for her own
soul rather than for her lover; and she saw that whether Kemper
suspected or not made no vital difference to her so long as the
dishonesty was there. "The unspoken lie is still between us and his
knowledge of it can neither take it away nor undo the fact that it has
been. And if I burned the letter might I not be guilty of even greater
things under the same impulse? Since I trust neither him nor myself what
is there but misery in any future that we may share? Shall I give him up
even now? Can I give him up?" But as she demanded this of herself there
returned to her the look in his eyes at certain animated instants, and
she felt that the charm of his look, which meant nothing, was stronger
to hold her than a multitude of reasons. "If I could forget this look in
his face, I might forget him," she thought, "but though I struggle to
forget it I cannot any more than I can forget the letter lying on his
desk."

Again she closed her eyes in a fresh effort to shut out consciousness;
but when she determined to sleep the darkness seemed to grow suddenly
alive about her, and starting up in a spasm of terror, she lighted the
candle on the table beside her bed.

"In the morning I shall tell him," she exclaimed aloud, "I shall tell
him everything and if he looks at me with anger I shall go away and not
see h