e herself time. "But I mean that
you shall. If I were a man I suppose I couldn't, because a man's code of
honour is such a clumsy cast-iron thing. But a woman's, luckily, can be
cut over--if she's clever--to fit any new occasion; and in this case I
should be willing to reduce mine to tatters if necessary."

Amherst's look of bewilderment deepened. "What is it that I don't
understand?" he asked at length, in a low voice.

"Well--first of all, why Mr. Langhope had the right to ask you to send
for your wife."

"The right?"

"You don't recognize such a right on his part?"

"No--why should I?"

"Supposing she had left you by his wish?"

"His wish? _His----?_"

He was on his feet now, gazing at her blindly, while the solid world
seemed to grow thin about him. Her next words reduced it to a mist.

"My poor Amherst--why else, on earth, should she have left you?"

She brought it out clearly, in her small chiming tones; and as the sound
travelled toward him it seemed to gather momentum, till her words rang
through his brain as if every incomprehensible incident in the past had
suddenly boomed forth the question. Why else, indeed, should she have
left him? He stood motionless for a while; then he approached Mrs.
Ansell and said: "Tell me."

She drew farther back into her corner of the sofa, waving him to a seat
beside her, as though to bring his inquisitory eyes on a level where her
own could command them; but he stood where he was, unconscious of her
gesture, and merely repeating: "Tell me."

She may have said to herself that a woman would have needed no farther
telling; but to him she only replied, slanting her head up to his: "To
spare you and himself pain--to keep everything, between himself and you,
as it had been before you married her."

He dropped down beside her at that, grasping the back of the sofa as if
he wanted something to clutch and throttle. The veins swelled in his
temples, and as he pushed back his tossed hair Mrs. Ansell noticed for
the first time how gray it had grown on the under side.

"And he asked this of my wife--he accepted it?'"

"Haven't _you_ accepted it?"

"I? How could I guess her reasons--how could I imagine----?"

Mrs. Ansell raised her brows a hair's breadth at that. "I don't know.
But as a fact, he didn't ask--it was she who offered, who forced it on
him, even!"

"Forced her going on him?"

"In a sense, yes; by making it appear that _you_ felt as he did
about--about poor