, that it was likely to be mine. You
could tell them what an impatient person I was, and that you said I
was not one to try an experiment, for I never, never could put up with
anything. John, you could be a witness as well as an advocate. You could
prove that you always expected--and that I am quite, quite willing to
allow that it was I----"

"Elinor, if I could only make you understand what I mean! I am told that
I am not to mention any names?"

"No, no names, no names! What is the good? We both know very well what
we mean."

"But I don't know very well what you mean. Don't you see that if it is
your fault--if the other party is innocent--there can be no reason in
the world why he should consent to renounce his rights. It is not a mere
matter of feeling. There is right in it one way or another--either on
your side or else on the other side; and if it is on the other side, why
should a man give up what belongs to him, why should he renounce what
is--most dear to him?"

"Oh, John, John, John!" she made this appeal and outcry, clasping her
hands together with a mixture of supplication and impatience. Then
turning to her mother--"Oh, tell him," she cried, "tell him!"--always
clasping those impatient yet beseeching hands.

"You see, John," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "Elinor knows that the right
is on her side: but she will consent to say nothing about it to any
one--to give herself out as the offender rather--that is to say, as an
ill-disciplined person that cannot put up with anything, as you seem to
have said."

John laughed with vexation, yet a kind of amusement. "I never said it
nor thought it: still if it pleases her to think so---- The wiser thing
if this separation is final----"

"If it is final!" Elinor cried. She raised herself up again in her
chair, and contemplated the unfortunate John with a sort of tragic
superiority. "Do you think that of me," she said, "that I would take
such a step as this and that it should not be final? Is dying final?
Could one do such a thing as this and change?"

"Such things have been done," said John. "Elinor, forgive me. I must say
it--it is all your life that is in the balance, and another life. There
is this infant to be struggled over, perhaps rent in two by those who
should have united to take care of him--and it's a boy, I hear. There's
his name and his after-life to think of--a child without a father,
perhaps the heir of a family to which he will not belong. Elinor--tell