She remembered now that, when she had first proposed that watering-place for their honeymoon, he had objected on the ground that Scarby was full of people whom he knew. Besides, he had said, she wouldn't like it. But whether she would like it or not, Anne, who had her bridal dignity to maintain, considered that in the matter of her honeymoon his wishes should give way to hers. She was inclined to measure the extent of his devotion by that test. Scarby, she said, was not full of people who knew her. Anne had been insistent and Majendie passive, as he was in most unimportant matters, reserving his energies for supremely decisive moments.

Anne, bearing her belief in Majendie in her innocent breast, failed at first to connect her husband with the remarkable intimations that passed between the two newcomers gossiping in the drawing-room before dinner. They, for their part, had no clue linking the unapproachably strange lady on the neighbouring sofa with the hero of their tale. The case, they said, was "infamous." At that point Majendie had put an end to his own history and his wife's uncertainty by entering the room. Three words and a look, observed by Anne, had established his identity.

Her mind was steadied by its inalienable possession of the facts. She had returned through prayer to her normal mood of religious resignation. She tried to support herself further by a chain of reasoning. If all things were divinely ordered, this sorrow also was the will of God. It was the burden she was appointed to take up and bear.

She bathed and dressed herself for the day. She felt so strange to herself in the e familiar processes that, standing before the looking-glass, she was curious to observe what manner of woman she had become. The inner

upheaval had been so profound that she was surprised to find so little record of it in her outward seeming.

Anne was a woman whose beauty was a thing of general effect, and the general effect remained uninjured. Nature had bestowed on her a body strongly made and superbly fashioned. Having framed her well, she coloured her but faintly. She had given her eyes of a light thick grey. Her eyebrows, her lashes, and her hair were of a pale gold that had ashen undershades in it. They all but matched a skin honey-white with that even, sombre, untransparent tone that belongs to a temperament at once bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the thin rose of the upper lip, foreshortened it, and gave to its low arc the emphasis of a curve, the vivacity of a dimple (Anne's under lip was straight as the tense string of a bow). When she spoke or smiled Anne's mole seemed literally to catch up her lip against its will, on purpose to show the small white teeth below. Majendie loved Anne's mole. It was that one charming and emphatic fault in her face, he said, that made it human. But Anne was ashamed of it.

She surveyed her own reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the back of her irreproachable coat,

arranging her delicate laces with a deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he could have seen in herafter Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's personality she had not permitted herself so much as to guess. Enough that the woman was notorious-infamous.

There was a knock at the door, the low knock she had come to know, and Majendie entered in obedience to her faint call.

The hours had changed him, given his bright face a tragic, submissive look, as of a man whipped and hounded to her feet.

He glanced first at the tray, to see if she had eaten her breakfast.

"There are some things I should like to say to you, with your permission. But I think we can discuss them better out of doors."

He looked round the disordered room. The associations of the place were evidently as painful to him as they were to her.

They went out. The parade was deserted at that early hour, and they found an empty seat at the far end of it. "I, too," she said, "have things that I should like to say."

He looked at her gravely.

"Will you allow me to say mine first?"

"Certainly; but I warn you, they will make no differ

ence."

"To you, possibly not. They make all the difference I'm not going to attempt to defend myself. I can see the whole thing from your point of view. I've been

to me.

"From whom? Not that it matters."

"From those women who came yesterday. I didn't know whom they were talking about. They were talking quite loud. They didn't know who I was."

"You say you didn't know whom they were talking about?"

"Not at first-not till you came in. Then I knew." "I see. That was the first time you had heard of it?" Her lips parted in assent, but her voice died under the torture.

"Then," he said, "I am profoundly sorry. If I had realised that, I would not have spoken to you as I did.” The memory of it stung her.

"That," she said, "was-in any circumstances-unpardonable."

"I know it was. And I repeat, I am profoundly sorry. But, you see, I thought you knew all the time, and that you had consented to forget it. And I thought, don't you know, it was—well, rather hard on me to have it all raked up again like that. Now I see how very hard it was on you, dear. Your not knowing makes all the difference." "It does indeed. If I had known--"

"I understand. You wouldn't have married me?" "I should not."

"Dear-do you suppose I didn't know that?" "I know nothing."

"Do you remember the day I asked you why you cared for me, and you said it was because you knew I was good?"

Her lip trembled.

"And of course I know it's been an awful shock to you to discover that-I-was not so good."

She turned away her face.

"But I never meant you to discover it. Not for yourself, like this. I couldn't have forgiven myself—after what you told me. I meant to have told you myselfthat evening-but my poor little sister promised me that she would. She said it would be easier for you to hear it from her. Of course I believed her. There were things she could say that I couldn't."

"She never said a word.”

"Are you sure?"

"Perfectly. Except-yes-she did say―"

It was coming back to her now.

"Do you mind telling me exactly what she said?"

"N-no. She made me promise that if I ever found things in you that I didn't understand, or that I didn't like "

"Well-what did she make you promise?"

"That I wouldn't be hard on you. Because, she said, you'd had such a miserable life."

"Poor Edith! So that was the nearest she could get to it. Things you didn't understand and didn't like!" "I didn't know what she meant."

"Of course you didn't. Who could? But I'm sorry to say that Edith made me pretty well believe you did." He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister's strange duplicity. Apparently he gave it up. "You can't be a brute to a poor little woman with a