ed by his own violence of the justice
in the stand he took. "Have you absolutely no faith in me?" he demanded.

For a moment the question occupied her thoughts.

"No, I don't think I have any now," she answered, "I've tried to make
myself believe I had--I've told a lie to my conscience about it every
day I lived--but I don't think I've ever really had faith in you since
that night--"

"And yet you are willing to marry me?" he asked, and the scorn in his
voice stung her like a physical blow. He looked at her with an angry
glance, and while his eyes rested upon her, she understood that he had
never really seen her in his life--that he had never penetrated beyond
the outward aspect, the trick of gesture.

"No!--No!" she cried out suddenly, as if she had awakened in terror from
her sleep. At the instant she saw herself through his eyes, humiliated,
beaten down, unwomanly, and she was possessed by a horror of her own
individuality which she felt in some way to be a part of her horror of
the man who had revealed it to her.

In his perplexity he had fallen back a step and stood now pulling
nervously at his moustache with a gesture which recalled his resemblance
to Perry Bridewell. This gesture, more than any words he spoke, shocked
her into an acuteness of perception which was almost unnatural in its
vividness. It was as if her soul, so long drugged to insensibility, had
started up in the last battle for liberation.

"No--no--it is impossible!" she repeated.

"Aren't you rather late in coming to this decision?" he enquired with a
short laugh.

But his irony was wasted upon her, for she saw only the look in his
eyes, which revealed her deception to her in a blaze of scorn--and she
felt that she hated him and herself with an almost equal hatred.

"I am sorry, but--but I can't," she stammered. Feeling her words to be
ineffectual she cast about wildly for some reason, some explanation
however trivial--and in the effort she found her eyes wandering
aimlessly about the room, taking in the scattered wedding presents, his
dejected yet angry look, and the fading white rosebud Gerty had pinned
jauntily in his coat. Then at last she realised that there was nothing
further that she could say, so she stood helplessly knotting the silver
cord while she watched the furious perplexity in which he tugged at his
moustache.

"I can't for the life of me see why you should be so damned jealous,
Laura," he burst out presently, thrust ba