real cause of Bessy's anger against her
husband.

At any rate, the moment was a critical one, and Justine remembered with
a pang that Mrs. Ansell had foreseen such a contingency, and implored
her to take measures against it. She had refused, from a sincere dread
of precipitating a definite estrangement--but had she been right in
judging the situation so logically? With a creature of Bessy's emotional
uncertainties the result of contending influences was really
incalculable--it might still be that, at this juncture, Amherst's return
would bring about a reaction of better feelings....

Justine sat and mused on these things after leaving her friend exhausted
upon a tearful pillow. She felt that she had perhaps taken too large a
survey of the situation--that the question whether there could ever be
happiness between this tormented pair was not one to concern those who
struggled for their welfare. Most marriages are a patch-work of jarring
tastes and ill-assorted ambitions--if here and there, for a moment, two
colours blend, two textures are the same, so much the better for the
pattern! Justine, certainly, could foresee in reunion no positive
happiness for either of her friends; but she saw positive disaster for
Bessy in separation from her husband....

Suddenly she rose from her chair by the falling fire, and crossed over
to the writing-table. She would write to Amherst herself--she would tell
him to come. The decision once reached, hope flowed back to her
heart--the joy of action so often deceived her into immediate faith in
its results!

"Dear Mr. Amherst," she wrote, "the last time I saw you, you told me you
would remember what I said. I ask you to do so now--to remember that I
urged you not to be away too long. I believe you ought to come back now,
though I know Bessy will not ask you to. I am writing without her
knowledge, but with the conviction that she needs you, though perhaps
without knowing it herself...."

She paused, and laid down her pen. Why did it make her so happy to write
to him? Was it merely the sense of recovered helpfulness, or something
warmer, more personal, that made it a joy to trace his name, and to
remind him of their last intimate exchange of words? Well--perhaps it
was that too. There were moments when she was so mortally lonely that
any sympathetic contact with another life sent a glow into her
veins--that she was thankful to warm herself at any fire.

XXV

BESSY, languidly gl