the floor.

"What is it?" cried Guest excitedly.

She told him in a few words, and he ran into the other room for water,
but Stratton was already coming to, and after drinking with avidity from
the glass Guest held to his lips, he rose shuddering and pale.

"Take her home," he said in a husky whisper as he rose. "Quick. It is
too horrible. Weak and faint, I cannot bear it."

He motioned toward the door, and Guest turned a look full of perplexity
toward Myra.

"No," she said firmly. "Edie, dear, stay with me. Mr Guest, go to my
father at once and tell him I am here with him who is to be my dear
husband, who is sick almost unto death. Tell him to come at once with a
doctor and a nurse."

As she spoke a look of joy shot across Stratton's face, and he took a
step toward her with outstretched hands, where she stood between him and
the door beside the fireplace. Then, all at once, his face changed, and
they thought him mad.

"No," he cried fiercely; "it is impossible."

He ran across, and flung open both inner and outer doors.

"Take them," he whispered fiercely--"take them back, man, or it will be
too late. You will make me what you think."

Myra would have stayed even then, in spite of Edie's hands trying to
drag her away; but, as she turned yearningly to Stratton, he shrank away
with such a despairing look of horror that she yielded herself to
Guest's strong arm, and suffered him to lead her back, half insensible,
to the carriage, into a corner of which she sank with a low moan, while
all the way home the beat of the horses feet and the rattle of the
wheels upon the pavement seemed to form themselves with terrible
iteration into the words she had heard fall from Stratton's lips, and
she shuddered as now, for the first time, she gave them with a terrible
significance:

"My punishment is greater than I can bear."

She grew more and more prostrate as they neared home, and was so weak
that she could hardly walk up the steps into the hall, but she recovered
a little, and, holding tightly by Guest's and Edie's arms, ascended
slowly to the drawing room, to find that the butler had hurried up
before them, and that Sir Mark had returned, and was coming to meet them
on the landing, startled by the man's words:

"Miss Myra has come home, sir, very ill."

The admiral would have sent off for medical help, but Myra insisted that
she was better; and as she began to recover herself the old man asked
eagerly: