ature of the case,
utterly unprepared for the scene that followed.

For a moment, she was paralysed at the sight of the doctor's ghastly
pallor and startled eyes as they lighted upon the stranger's face.

"You?" he breathed through stiffened lips.

"Yes, Brian. I was given the chance as Nurse Grey was ill. I had to see
you again!" her voice was fiercely agitated. "Won't you hear me?"

"Good God! Don't you understand that you are nothing to me?--less than
nothing!" His eyes blazed.

"Yet you never divorced me! That gave me hope. Have you no forgiveness?
No pity?"

A stony silence.

"Oh, you are hard!--_hard_! It is not fair to punish any one forever for
one mistake----"

"Mistake, do you call it?"

"Sin, if you will have it. Are _you_ sinless? After all, we are but
human, and we forgive as we hope to be forgiven." She made a movement as
if to fall at his feet, and Honor rushed blindly from the room. Her one
instinct was to get away somewhere and hide--hide from the knowledge so
ruthlessly thrust upon her. It was too horrible to contemplate. She
shuddered from head to foot, and shivered as with ague. Out into the
open she ran, among the dust-laden crotons and azaleas, and the florid
shrubberies of the Indian garden, now bathed in soft moonlight. Scarcely
heeding her footsteps, she stumbled to a bench beneath a laburnum. If it
harboured reptiles, she was indifferent. Let her be bitten and die! She
was crushed and bowed to the earth with a burden of grief too great to
endure,--too hopeless to think upon.

What was it that he had offered her? Had he meant to insult her?

Never! He loved her too well. He would have killed himself rather than
have treated her lightly.

What was it then?

Her mind refused to act. It acknowledged only one thought, and that was,
severance--immediate, final--from the being she loved most on earth.
That was inevitable.

Brian Dalton was married. He had been married all the time. Joyce had
misunderstood; or he had lied to her.

No. She would not allow to herself that he had lied. His was not a petty
nature given to lying, or to the faults of the weak and timid. He was a
daring and defiant sinner, "risking damnation," as he had once said, for
the desire of his heart. She could now understand his bitterness, his
recurring moods of sadness and almost of remorse; for he was plotting
all the while against the honour of the girl he respected as well as
loved.

Consecutive thought was