he stood there, he felt the bands of
self-control weaken about him. A vision of the cold, grey days ahead
terrified him. He was pitting his brain against his heart. Lives had
been wrecked in that fashion. Philosophy, as the years creep on, is but
a dour consolation. He saw himself with the jewel of life in his hand,
prepared to cast it away. He turned around and ran up the stone steps,
light-hearted and eager as a boy. Nora heard the door open and raised
her head. On the threshold stood Stephen, transformed, rejuvenated, the
lover shining out of his eyes, the look in his face for which she had
prayed. He came towards her, speechless save for one little cry that
ended like a sob in his throat, took her into his arms tenderly but
fiercely, held her to him while the unsuspected passion of his lips
brought paradise into the room.

"You care?" she faltered. "This is not pity?"

He held her to him till she almost swooned. The restraint of so many
years was broken down.

"Must I, after all, be the teacher?" he asked passionately, as their
lips met again. "Must I show you what love is?"

CHAPTER XIII

Tallente was seated at breakfast a few mornings later when his wife paid
him an unexpected visit. She responded to his greeting with a cold nod,
refused the coffee which he offered her and the easy-chair which he
pushed forward to the fire.

"I got your letter, Andrew," she said, "in which you proposed to call
upon me this afternoon. I am leaving town. I am on my way back to New
York, as a matter of fact, and I shall have left the hotel by midday, so
you see I have come to visit you instead."

"It is very kind," he answered.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked disparagingly around the plainly
furnished man's sitting room.

"Not much altered here," she remarked. "It looks just as it did when I
used to come to tea with you before we were married."

"The neighbourhood is a conservative one," he replied. "Still, I must
confess that I am glad I never gave the rooms up. I don't think that
nature intended me to dwell in palaces."

"Perhaps not," she agreed, a little insolently. "It is a habit of yours
to think and live parochially. Now what did you want of me, please?"

"There is a scheme on foot," he began, "to bring about my political
ruin."

"You don't mean to tell me," she exclaimed, with a sudden light in her
eyes, "that you, my well-behaved Andrew, have been playing around? You
are not going to be a corespo