ade a mistake,
a horrible, horrible mistake. It's killing me. I can't go on. I don't
love him, Franklin--I don't love Gerald--I can't marry him. And how can
I tell him? How can I break faith with him?'

Franklin stood very still, his hand clasping hers, the other ceasing its
rhythmic, consolatory movement. He held her, this woman whom he had
loved for so many years, and over her bent head he looked before him at
the frivolous and ugly wall-paper, a chaos of festooned chrysanthemums
on a bright pink ground. He gazed at the chrysanthemums, and he
wondered, with a direful pang, whether Althea were consciously lying to
him.

She sobbed on: 'Even in the first week, I knew that something was wrong.
Of course I was in love--but it was only that--there was nothing else
except being in love. Doubts gnawed at me from the first; I couldn't
bear to accept them; I hoped on and on. Only in this last week I've seen
that I can't--I can't marry him. Oh----' and the wail was again
repeated, 'what shall I do, Franklin?'

He spoke at last, and in the disarray of her sobbing and darkened
condition--her face pressed against him, her ears full of the sound of
her own labouring breath--she could not know to the full how strange his
voice was, though she felt strangeness and caught her breath to listen.

'Don't take it like this, Althea,' he said. 'It's not so bad as all
this. It can all be made right. You must just tell him the truth and set
him free.'

And now there was a strange silence. He was waiting, and she was waiting
too; she stilled her breath and he stilled his; all each heard was the
beating of his and her own heart. And the silence, to Althea, was full
of a new and formless fear, and to Franklin of an acceptation sad beyond
all the sadnesses of his life. Even before Althea spoke, and while the
sweet, the rapturous, the impossible hope softly died away, he knew in
his heart, emptied of magic, that it was he Althea needed.

She spoke at last, in a changed and trembling voice; it pierced him, for
he felt the new fear in it: 'How can I tell him the truth, Franklin?'
she said. 'How can I tell you the truth? How can I say that I turned
from the real thing, the deepest, most beautiful thing in my life--and
hurt it, broke it, put it aside, so blind, so terribly blind I was--and
took the unreal thing? How can I ever forgive myself--but, O Franklin,
much, much more, how can you ever forgive me?' her voice wailed up,
claiming him supre