trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six years can you say that I put another woman in your place?"

She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a hopeless, helpless gesture.

"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it was wrong."

"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the beginning. How are we going to make it right?"

"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best."

"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"

"I have told you that I am not going to leave you.” "We are to go on, then, as we did before?"

"Yes-as far as possible."

"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't you see now that it's all wrong?" "What do you mean?"

"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?"

"Does it rest with me?"

"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it. What is your notion of the best?"

"I don't know, Walter."

"I must know. You say you'll take me back-you'll never leave me. What are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for me, dear. It was bad for both of us."

She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her

throat. The sound went to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity.

"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep straight. You needn't be afraid. OnlySee here. There's no reason why you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie. You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along. There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up

"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for."

"I know I know. But still-we mightn't be so unhappy-perhaps, in time-And if we had children" "Never," she cried sharply, "never!"

He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she drew back, flinching.

"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me."

"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation of your sin-three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought to have."

She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him.

"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything."

"I have never compelled you, as you know."

"I know. I know you have been good in that way." "Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?" "Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will not go back to you; but if I do,

you must understand plainly, that it will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself. To save some other woman, perhaps—”

"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms. I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are trying to tell me

is that you do not care for me."

She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I do not care for you. Not in that way."

He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any way—your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that. I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all."

Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if trying to see the truth inside herself.

"No-no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there is no way in which I can care for you again. Or-well-I can care perhaps I'm caring nowbut "

"I see. You do not love me."

She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and— I do not love you."

"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said."

"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you."

"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping things from me." "I had meant to spare you."

At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me."
She still hesitated.

"What is it?"

She spoke low.

"If you had been here that night-Peggy would not have died."

He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly.

"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were not dead.”

She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain.

He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compassion.

"Why have you told me this?" he said.

"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when nothing else will."

"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?" Anne closed her eyes.

CHAPTER XXXVI

HE did not know whether he believed what she had

said, nor whether she believed it herself, neither

could he understand her motive in saying it.

At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that could have made him charge her with it.

Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty of the blow had brutalised his imagination.

He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey, measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted. He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and cleared it.