,' he
answered. 'I thought, rightly or wrongly, that I was justified in
deceiving you for your own good. But now you are taking away all this
from me, Mabel! I must die with the sense of having failed miserably,
when I thought I was most successful, with the knowledge that by what
I have done I have only increased the evil! Must I leave you with your
happy home blighted past recovery, with nothing before you but a
lonely, barren existence? Must I think of you living out your life,
proud and unforgiving, and wretched to the end? I entreat you to give
me some better comfort, some brighter prospect than that--you will
punish me for my share in it all by refusing what I ask, but will you
refuse?'

She came back to him. 'No,' she said brokenly, 'I have given you pain
enough, I will refuse you nothing now, only it is so hard--tell me
what I am to do!'

'Do not desert him, do not shame him before the world!' he said; 'bear
with him still, give him the chance of winning back what he has lost.
Peace may be long in coming to you--but it will come some day, and
even if it never comes at all, Mabel, you will have done your duty,
there will be a comfort in that. Will you promise this, for my sake?'

She raised her face, which she had hidden in her hands. 'I
promise--for your sake,' she said, and at her words he sank back with
a sigh of relief--his work was over, and the energy he had summoned up
to accomplish it left him suddenly.

'Thank you!' he said faintly; 'you have made me happier, Mabel. I
should like to see Mark, but I am tired. I shall sleep now.'

'I will come to-morrow,' she said, and bending over him, she kissed
his forehead. She had not kissed him since the time when she was a
child and he an undergraduate, devoted to her even then; and now that
kiss and the touch of her hand lingered with him till he slept, and
perhaps followed him some little way into the land of dreams.

Mark had been waiting in a little dark sitting-room on a lower floor;
he had not dared to follow Mabel. At last, after long hours, as it
seemed, of slow torment, he heard her descending slowly, and came to
meet her; she was very pale and had been weeping, but her manner was
composed now.

'Let us go home,' was all she said to him, and they drove back in
silence as they had come. But when they had reached their home Mark
could bear his uncertainty no longer.

'Mabel,' he said, and his voice shook, 'have you nothing to say to me,
still?'