d. "I have visited
Mrs. Wade at Waterfall Cottage, at night too, and only not by stealth
because I thought that Hercules' ghost--" he shivered a little--"would
have kept spies and onlookers from that place."

Lady O'Gara shifted his head slightly with the greatest gentleness, so
that she might caress him, stroking his hair with her fingers.

"Well, and why not?" she asked, with her air of gaiety.

"There never was such a wife as you, Mary," he said. "Go on stroking
my hair. It draws the pain out."

"You have neuralgia?" she asked with quick alarm.

"No: it is a duller pain than that. It is a sort of congestion caused
by keeping secrets from you."

"Secrets!" Her voice was quite unsuspicious. "You could not keep them
long."

He sat up and looked at her, and she saw that there was pain in his
eyes.

"I have been keeping secrets from you all our wedded life together,
Mary."

She uttered a little sound of dismay--of grief. Then she said, with an
assumption of an easy manner:

"And if you have, Shawn, well--they must be things I had no right to
know. There are reticences I can respect. Other people's secrets
might be involved...."

"That was it," he said eagerly. "There was another person's secret
involved. I kept it back when it would have rested my heart to tell
you."

"I shall not ask you to tell me now unless the time has come to tell.
I can trust you, Shawn."

"The time may have come," he answered, drawing down her caressing hand
to kiss it. "Another man might have told it to win you the more
completely, Mary. He might have found justification for betraying his
friend. I thought at one time you must have cared for Terence
Comerford and not for me. It was the strangest thing in the world that
you should have cared for me. Terence was so splendid, so big, so
handsome and pleasant with every one. How could you have preferred me
before him? And I knew he wasn't fit for you, Mary. I knew there was
another girl,--yet I held my peace. It tortured me, to keep silence.
And there was the other girl to be thought of. He owed reparation to
the other girl. But his mother had her heart set on you for a
daughter-in-law. I believe he would have done the right thing if he
had lived,--in spite of all it would have meant to his mother. He had
a good heart,--but--oh, my God!--he should not have lifted his eyes to
you when there was that other poor girl!"

He spoke in a voice as though he were bei