"If all good women were to reason that way—

"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would happen?"

"There would be more good men in the world."

"Would there? There would be more good men ruined Because, don't you see, there'd be no

by bad women.

others left for them to speak to."

"If you're thinking of his good" "Have you thought of hers?"

"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do then?-poor Edie!"

"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to heaven."

Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch.

Majendie rose, placid and benignant.

"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed."

M

CHAPTER XVI

AJENDIE could never be angry with any woman

for more than five minutes. And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen, as Edith had said, "everything.'

But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel."

She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral deadness that he carried.

It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair. But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr. Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have

known that, if she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past, she, would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer.

She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn.

She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal.

If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had not invited him at

once.

At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress upon the name) to dinner on Friday.

The day was Tuesday.

"And is he coming?" said Anne.

"He is," said Majendie.

When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine with Mrs. Eliott,

"I thought you would," said Majendie.

She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't. They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such weather.

He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door. "Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella and held it over her.

"Not at all," said she significantly.

At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab.

Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep, with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on.

Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a pathetic spectacle.

"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry."

He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in the cab, with Anne's boots on his

knees, guarding them with a caressing hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped with its passage from the cab to their doorstep.

"I think my feet are wet," said she.

"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he.

He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission, to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then magnanimously forgive.

It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head.

"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he.

"What was worth while?"

"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?"

There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual voluptuary.