ness toward his old friend for her
request. It seemed to him incredibly stupid that she should think for
an instant that he, an unmarried man, could assume the post of guardian
over a wife's love for her husband. It implied, in the first place, an
intimacy which Sheila was far too fine-grained to permit; for however
confidential she might become on the subject of her work, she would
never be confidential with him in regard to Ted. Whatever he might
perceive, she would never give him the opportunity to say to her, "I
think that your affection for your husband is waning. Let us put fresh
fuel on the fire."

It implied, too, that request of Mrs. Caldwell's, a sharing of Sheila's
life which Shadyville would never tolerate; which his own awakened
heart could not tolerate. He could not be much with Sheila henceforth.
For once, Shadyville's narrow restrictions would be right.

So, he told himself, Mrs. Caldwell had been stupid.
And--unconsciously, of course--she had been cruel.

And yet--she was leaving Sheila, leaving her to an essentially alien
companion. What wonder that, in her passionate solicitude, she had
reached out to the one person whose understanding sympathy she could
count upon? What wonder that, however unpractically, she had made an
appeal to one whose heart she had divined better than she knew? What
wonder, even, that he had made her a sort of promise? "There is
nothing I would not do for you or Sheila!" he had said to her; and that
was true. There was nothing he would not do for them--if he could.
Only--Ted himself must keep what was his own! He had been man enough
to win Sheila; now he must keep her!

Ted had been man enough to win her; and he, Peter, had not been! That
was what he realized now--with measureless self-scorn. _He_ had not
even been man enough to know that he loved her; much less man enough to
make her his. And now, because he could not make her his, his life was
charred to ashes--but his soul was an anguished, unquenchable flame.
He had long thought that he knew the worst of himself; his
discreditable indolence; his reluctance for effort and conquest; his
insufficient courage to follow his emotions into poverty; and that
negligible fineness of his which had held him back from advantages that
he could not repay with genuine emotion. He had known all that of
himself, calling it his worst, and feeling a certain pride in it, too,
as in a failure that was of more delicate fiber th