perhaps. Was she content, always? Did she believe in me?"

"Believe in you?--when she knew you to be so good!--when you adored
her!"

"She thought that? She said it? Then what in Heaven's name ails
me?--unless it is all as you believe, Theresa, and she knows now what
she didn't know then, poor dear, and minds----"

"Minds what? What do you mean, Allan?"

I, who with my perhaps illegitimate advantage saw so clear, knew that he
had not meant to tell her: I did him that justice, even in my first
jealousy. If I had not tortured him so by clinging near him, he would
not have told her. But the moment came, and overflowed, and he did tell
her--passionate, tumultuous story that it was. During all our life
together, Allan's and mine, he had spared me, had kept me wrapped in the
white cloak of an unblemished loyalty. But it would have been kinder, I
now bitterly thought, if, like many husbands, he had years ago found for
the story he now poured forth some clandestine listener; I should not
have known. But he was faithful and good, and so he waited till I, mute
and chained, was there to hear him. So well did I know him, as I
thought, so thoroughly had he once been mine, that I saw it in his eyes,
heard it in his voice, before the words came. And yet, when it came, it
lashed me with the whips of an unbearable humiliation. For I, his wife,
had not known how greatly he could love.

And that Theresa, soft little traitor, should, in her still way, have
cared too! Where was the iron in her, I moaned within my stricken
spirit, where the steadfastness? From the moment he bade her, she turned
her soft little petals up to him--and my last delusion was spent. It was
intolerable; and none the less so that in another moment she had,
prompted by some belated thought of me, renounced him. Allan was hers,
yet she put him from her; and it was my part to watch them both.

Then in the anguish of it all I remembered, awkward, untutored spirit
that I was, that I now had the Great Recourse. Whatever human things
were unbearable, I had no need to bear. I ceased, therefore, to make
the effort that kept me with them. The pitiless poignancy was dulled,
the sounds and the light ceased, the lovers faded from me, and again I
was mercifully drawn into the dim, infinite spaces.

* * * * *

There followed a period whose length I cannot measure and during which I
was able to make no progress in the difficult, dizzying experi