ess a tendency to laugh.

'I mustn't pry into secrets,' she simpered.

'But there is no secret!' Christian panted, laying down his teacup for
fear he should drop it. 'Whom should I--could I have married?'

Constance also put aside her cup. She was bewildered, and just a little
abashed. With courage which came he knew not whence, Christian bent
forward and continued speaking:

'Whom could I marry after that day when I met you in the little
drawing-room at the Robinsons'?'

She stared in genuine astonishment, then was embarrassed.

'You cannot--cannot have forgotten----?'

'You surely don't mean to say, Mr. Moxey, that you have remembered? Oh,
I'm afraid I was a shocking flirt in those days!'

'But I mean _after_ your marriage--when I found you in tears'----

'Please, please don't remind me!' she exclaimed, giggling nervously.
'Oh how silly!--of me, I mean. To think that--but you are making fun of
me, Mr. Moxey?'

Christian rose and went to the window. He was not only shaken by his
tender emotions--something very like repugnance had begun to affect
him. If Constance were feigning, it was in very bad taste; if she spoke
with sincerity--what a woman had he worshipped! It did not occur to him
to lay the fault upon his own absurd romanticism. After eleven years'
persistence in one point of view, he could not suddenly see the affair
with the eyes of common sense.

He turned and approached her again.

'Do you not know, then,' he asked, with quiet dignity, 'that ever since
the day I speak of, I have devoted my life to the love I then felt? All
these years, have you not understood me?'

Mrs. Palmer was quite unable to grasp ideas such as these. Neither her
reading nor her experience prepared her to understand what Christian
meant. Courtship of a married woman was intelligible enough to her; but
a love that feared to soil itself, a devotion from afar, encouraged by
only the faintest hope of reward other than the most insubstantial--of
that she had as little conception as any woman among the wealthy vulgar.

'Do you really mean, Mr. Moxey, that you--have kept unmarried for _my_
sake?'

'You don't know that?' he asked, hoarsely.

'How could I? How was I to imagine such a thing? Really, was it proper?
How could you expect me, Mr. Moxey----?'

For a moment she looked offended. But her real feelings were
astonishment and amusement, not unmingled with an idle gratification.

'I must ask you to pardon me,' said Chri