t; then,
kneeling on the sofa, he caught her in his long arms across the back of
it, and after the pressure of a kiss upon her lips such as she had never
felt before, breathed with a voice of unutterable gladness: "Mildred!
Darling! Dearest love!"

A hoarse cry, almost a shriek, broke from the lips of Milly. The woman
he held struggled from his arms and stared at him wildly in the veiling
twilight. A strange horror fell upon him, and for several seconds he
remained motionless, leaning over the back of the sofa. Then, groping
towards the wall, he switched on the electric light. He saw it plainly,
the white mask of a woman smitten with a mortal blow.

"Milly," he uttered, stammeringly. "What's the matter? You are ill."

She turned on him her heart-broken look, then pressing her hand to her
throat, spoke as though with difficulty.

"I love you very much--you don't know how much I love you. I've tried
so hard to be a good wife to you."

Ian perceived catastrophe, yet dimly; sought with desperate haste to
remember why for a moment he had believed that that Other was come back;
what irreparable thing he had said or done.

Meantime he must say something. "Milly, dear! What's gone wrong? What
have I done, child?"

"You've let her take you--" She spoke more freely now, but with a
startling fierceness--"You've let her take you from me."

"Ah, the old trouble! My poor Milly! I know it's terrible for you. I can
only say that no one else really exists; that you are always you
really."

"That's not true. You don't believe it yourself. That wicked creature
has made you love her--her own wicked way. You want to have her instead
of me; you want to destroy your own wife and to get her back again."

The cruel, ultimate truth that Milly's words laid bare--the truth which
he constantly refused to look upon, in mercy to himself and
her--paralyzed the husband's tongue. He tried to approach her with vague
words and gestures of affection and remonstrance, but she motioned him
from her.

"No. Don't say you love me; I can't believe it, and I hate to hear you
say what's not true."

For a moment the fierce heart of Primitive Woman had blazed up within
her--that fire which all the waters of baptism fail to quench. But the
flame died down as suddenly as it had arisen, and appealing with
outspread hands, as to some invisible judge, she wailed, miserably:

"Oh, what am I to do--what am I to do? I love you so much, and it's all
no use."