ecause I was in hell and mad--and grasped at the hand you held
out to me. I suppose I've done you the biggest wrong a woman can do a man.
Now I've come to my senses, I shudder at what I've done."

"Why? Why?" said Septimus, growing miserably unhappy.

"How can you ever marry, unless we go through the vulgarity of a collusive
divorce?"

"My dear girl," said he, "what woman would ever marry a preposterous
lunatic like me?"

"There's not a woman living who ought not to have gone down on her bended
knees if she had married you."

"I should never have married," said he, laying his hand for a moment
reassuringly on hers.

"Who knows?" She gave a slight laugh. "Zora is only a woman like the rest
of us."

"Why talk of Zora?" he said quickly. "What has she to do with it?"

"Everything. You don't suppose I don't know," she replied in a low voice.
"It was for her sake and not for mine."

He was about to speak when she put out her hand and covered his mouth.

"Let me talk for a little."

She took up her parable again and spoke very gently, very sensibly. The
moonlight peacefulness was in her heart. It softened the tone of her voice
and reflected itself in unfamiliar speech.

"I seem to have grown twenty years older," she said.

She desired on that night to make her gratitude clear to him, to ask his
pardon for past offenses. She had been like a hunted animal; sometimes she
had licked his hand and sometimes she had scratched it. She had not been
quite responsible. Sometimes she had tried to send him away, for his own
sake. For herself, she had been terrified at the thought of losing him.

"Another man might have done what you did, out of chivalry; but no other
man but you would not have despised the woman. I deserved it; but I knew
you didn't despise me. You have been just the same to me all through as
you were in the early days. It braced me up and helped me to keep some sort
of self-respect. That was the chief reason why I could not let you go. Now
all is over. I am quite sane and as happy as I ever shall be. After
to-night it stands to reason we must each lead our separate lives. You
can't do anything more for me, and God knows, poor dear, I can't do
anything for you. So I want to thank you."

She put her arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek.

Septimus flushed. Her lips were soft and her breath was sweet. No woman
save his mother had ever kissed him. He turned and took her hands.

"Let me accept that i