of
that day when I saved your life----"

"If you had only let me die then!" she broke in passionately. "If God
had only mercifully deprived you of all strength!"

"You were blooming and gay," he went on as if he had not heard her
words. "Yes, you are changed since then."

"I will not hear these things," she cried; "I will not be made to look
back upon what we all were then."

She closed her eyes in blind anguish; his words brought back with such
terrible force the time of that meeting--the day but one before her
marriage, when he had started up so fatally in her path, and never left
it till this terrible moment.

"Then to change the subject," he said. "In our brief conversation the
other day we arrived at no conclusion whatever, nor was your letter any
more satisfactory; will you tell me exactly what you have decided upon?"

A sudden flash of anger leaped into her eyes above all the suffering
that dilated them.

"Now you are talking naturally," she said, "now you are your real self!"

He bowed in graceful, almost insulting mockery.

"It is your turn to pay compliments," he answered; "but I shall not
receive them so ungraciously as you did mine."

She passed her hand across her throat as if something were choking her,
then she said in a hard, measured tone:

"Have you considered the proposition I made you--will you go away from
this country, and remain away for ever?"

He stood playing with his watchchain in an easy, careless way, as he
replied:

"It is cruel to banish me--very cruel!"

"Listen!" she exclaimed passionately; "I know more than you think--your
residence here is not safe!"

He only bowed again.

"It may be so, but I leave few traces in my path. If you do indeed know
anything which could affect me, I am very certain that in you I have a
friend who will be silent."

He opened his vest slightly and drew forth from an inner pocket a small
paper, at the sight of which Elizabeth grew whiter than before. She made
a gesture as if she would have snatched it from him, but he thrust it
back in its hiding-place with a sarcastic smile.

"Secret for secret," said he; "but never mind that. After all, you treat
me very badly. I wonder I am in the least inclined to be friends with
you."

"Don't mock me!" she exclaimed. "Friends! There is no creature living
that I loathe as I do you! No matter what the danger may be, I will
speak the truth; tell you how utterly abhorrent you are to me, and brave
the