I've
been tried more than any man ought to be," he went on with righteous
bitterness. "It was unfair. What possessed you to? . . . What possessed
you? . . . Write such a . . . After five years of perfect happiness!
'Pon my word, no one would believe. . . . Didn't you feel you couldn't?
Because you couldn't . . . it was impossible--you know. Wasn't it?
Think. Wasn't it?"

"It was impossible," she whispered, obediently.

This submissive assent given with such readiness did not soothe him,
did not elate him; it gave him, inexplicably, that sense of terror
we experience when in the midst of conditions we had learned to think
absolutely safe we discover all at once the presence of a near and
unsuspected danger. It was impossible, of course! He knew it. She knew
it. She confessed it. It was impossible! That man knew it, too--as well
as any one; couldn't help knowing it. And yet those two had been engaged
in a conspiracy against his peace--in a criminal enterprise for which
there could be no sanction of belief within themselves. There could not
be! There could not be! And yet how near to . . . With a short thrill
he saw himself an exiled forlorn figure in a realm of ungovernable,
of unrestrained folly. Nothing could be foreseen, foretold--guarded
against. And the sensation was intolerable, had something of the
withering horror that may be conceived as following upon the utter
extinction of all hope. In the flash of thought the dishonouring
episode seemed to disengage itself from everything actual, from
earthly conditions, and even from earthly suffering; it became purely a
terrifying knowledge, an annihilating knowledge of a blind and infernal
force. Something desperate and vague, a flicker of an insane desire to
abase himself before the mysterious impulses of evil, to ask for mercy
in some way, passed through his mind; and then came the idea, the
persuasion, the certitude, that the evil must be forgotten--must be
resolutely ignored to make life possible; that the knowledge must be
kept out of mind, out of sight, like the knowledge of certain death is
kept out of the daily existence of men. He stiffened himself inwardly
for the effort, and next moment it appeared very easy, amazingly
feasible, if one only kept strictly to facts, gave one's mind to their
perplexities and not to their meaning. Becoming conscious of a long
silence, he cleared his throat warningly, and said in a steady voice--

"I am glad you feel this . . . u