was not the faintest tinge of
colour in his face; just that ivory pallor, against the ebony lines of
his straight brows, and smooth dark hair.

Jane softly left the room, closing the door behind her.

Then followed the longest fifteen minutes she had ever known. She
realised what a tremendous conflict was in progress in that quiet room.
Garth was arriving at his decision without having heard any of her
arguments. By the strange fatality of his own insistence, he had heard
only two words of her letter, and those the crucial words; the two
words to which the whole letter carefully led up. They must have
revealed to him instantly, what the character of the letter would be;
and what was the attitude of mind towards himself, of the woman who
wrote them.

Jane paced the dining-room in desperation, remembering the hours of
thought which had gone to the compiling of sentences, cautiously
preparing his mind to the revelation of the signature.

Suddenly, in the midst of her mental perturbation, there came to her
the remembrance of a conversation between Nurse Rosemary and Garth over
the pictures. The former had said: "Is she a wife?" And Garth had
answered: "Yes." Jane had instantly understood what that answer
revealed and implied. Because Garth had so felt her his during those
wonderful moments on the terrace at Shenstone, that he could look up
into her face and say, "My wife"--not as an interrogation, but as an
absolute statement of fact,--he still held her this, as indissolubly as
if priest, and book, and ring, had gone to the wedding of their union.
To him, the union of souls came before all else; and if that had taken
place, all that might follow was but the outward indorsement of an
accomplished fact. Owing to her fear, mistrust, and deception, nothing
had followed. Their lives had been sundered; they had gone different
ways. He regarded himself as being no more to her than any other man of
her acquaintance. During these years he had believed, that her part in
that evening's wedding of souls had existed in his imagination, only;
and had no binding effect upon her. But his remained. Because those
words were true to him then, he had said them; and, because he had said
them, he would consider her his wife, through life,--and after. It was
the intuitive understanding of this, which had emboldened Jane so to
sign her letter. But how would he reconcile that signature with the
view of her conduct which he had all along taken,