car, leaving her to her fate. His
compunction was intense, his pity overwhelming. Merely at turning his
back on her to stroll around the lawn he felt guilty of a cowardly
abandonment. And he felt something else--he felt the clinging of her
arms around his neck; he felt the throb of her bosom against his own as
she let herself break down just for a second--just for a sob. It seemed
to him that he should feel that throb forever.

He hurried back to where he had left her. "It's no use," he said to
himself; "I'm in for it, by Jove. I simply can't leave her in the
lurch."

There was no formal correctness about Ashley's habitual speech. He kept,
as a rule, to the idiom of the mess, giving it distinction by his crisp,
agreeable enunciation.

Olivia had let the bit of embroidery rest idly in her lap. She looked up
at his approach. He stood before her.

"Do I understand," he asked, with a roughness assumed to conceal his
agitation, "that you're offering me my liberty?"

"No; that I'm asking you for mine."

"On what grounds?"

She arched her eyebrows, looking round about her comprehensively. "I
should think that was clear. On the grounds of--of everything."

"That's not enough. So long as you can't say that you don't--don't care
about me any more--"

There was that possibility. It was very faint, but if she made use of it
he should consider it decisive. Doing precisely the right thing would
become quite another course of action if her heart rejected him. But she
spoke promptly.

"I can't say that; but I can say something more important."

He nodded firmly. "That settles it, by Jove. I sha'n't give you up.
There's no reason for it. So long as we love each other--"

"Our loving each other wouldn't make your refusal any the less hard for
me. As your wife I should be trying to fill a position for which I'm no
longer qualified and in which I should be a failure."

"As my wife," he said, slowly, with significant deliberation, "we could
make the position anything you felt able to fill."

She considered this. "That is, you could send in your papers and retire
into private life."

"If we liked."

"So that you'd be choosing between your career--and me."

"I object to the way of putting it. If my career, as you call it, didn't
make you happy, you should have whatever would do the trick."

"I'm afraid you'll think me captious if I say that nothing _could do_
it. If you weren't happy, I couldn't be; and you'd never be