s full of pain.

"Ah, don't call me that!" she rejoined passionately. "Don't make me
hate my own name! Better a hundred times an open foe----"

"Have I ever been anything but an open foe?" he returned. "On this
point at any rate?"

She swept the remonstrance by. "Better," she cried vehemently, "far
better a fate we know, a lot we understand; far better freedom and
poverty, than to live thus--yesterday a laughing-stock, to-day slaves;
yesterday false to our vows, to-day false to our friends! Oh, there
must be an end! There----"

She choked on the word, and her distress moved Asgill to do a strange
thing. He had listened to her with an admiration that for the time
purified the man, lifted him above selfishness, put the desire to
triumph far from him. Now he stepped forward. "I would rather never
cross this threshold again," he cried; "never, ay, believe me, I would
rather never see you again, than give you this pain! I go, dear lady, I
go! And do not let one thought of me trouble or distress you! Let this
gentleman have his way. I do not understand. I do not ask to
understand, how he holds you, or constrains you. But I shall be
silent."

He seemed to the onlookers as much raised above himself as Colonel John
seemed depressed below himself. There could be no doubt with whom the
victory lay: with whom the magnanimity. Asgill stood erect, almost
beatified, a Saint George, a knight of chivalry. Colonel Sullivan
showed smaller to the eye, stood bowed and grey-faced, a man beaten and
visibly beaten.

But as Asgill turned on his heel Flavia found her voice. "Do not go!"
she cried impulsively. "There must be an end! There must be an end of
this!"

But Asgill insisted. He saw that to go, to submit himself to the sway
against which she revolted was to impress himself upon her mind, was to
commend himself to her a hundred times more seriously than if he
stayed. And he persisted. "No," he said; "permit me to go." He stepped
forward and, with a grace borrowed for the occasion, and with lips that
trembled at his daring, he raised and kissed her hand. "Permit me to
go, dear lady. I would rather banish myself a hundred times than bring
ill into this house or differences into this family."

"Flavia!" Colonel Sullivan said, finding his voice at last, "hear
first, I am begging you, what I have to say! Hear it, since against my
will the matter has been brought to your knowledge."

"That last I can believe!" she cried spitefully.