s to her like a
living accusation. It seemed strange that the hum of the bees and flies
and the gentle swishing of the limetree should still go on outside,
insisting that there was a world moving and breathing apart from her,
and careless of her misery. Then some of her courage came back, and with
it her woman's mute power. It came haunting about her face, perfectly
still, about her lips, sensitive and drawn, about her eyes, dark, almost
mutinous under their arched brows. She stood, drawing him with silence
and beauty.

At last he spoke:

"I have made a foolish mistake, it seems. I believed you were free."

Her lips just moved for the words to pass: "I thought you knew. I never,
dreamed you would want to marry me."

It seemed to her natural that he should be thinking only of himself, but
with the subtlest defensive instinct, she put forward her own tragedy:

"I suppose I had got too used to knowing I was dead."

"Is there no release?"

"None. We have neither of us done wrong; besides with him, marriage
is--for ever."

"My God!"

She had broken his smile, which had been cruel without meaning to be
cruel; and with a smile of her own that was cruel too, she said:

"I didn't know that you believed in release either."

Then, as though she had stabbed herself in stabbing him, her face
quivered.

He looked at her now, conscious at last that she was suffering. And she
felt that he was holding himself in with all his might from taking her
again into his arms. Seeing this, the warmth crept back to her lips, and
a little light into her eyes, which she kept hidden from him. Though she
stood so proudly still, some wistful force was coming from her, as
from a magnet, and Miltoun's hands and arms and face twitched as though
palsied. This struggle, dumb and pitiful, seemed never to be coming to
an end in the little white room, darkened by the thatch of the verandah,
and sweet with the scent of pinks and of a wood fire just lighted
somewhere out at the back. Then, without a word, he turned and went out.
She heard the wicket gate swing to. He was gone.

CHAPTER XVI

Lord Denis was fly-fishing--the weather just too bright to allow the
little trout of that shallow, never silent stream to embrace with
avidity the small enticements which he threw in their direction.
Nevertheless he continued to invite them, exploring every nook of their
watery pathway with his soft-swishing line. In a rough suit and battered
hat ador