nfluence that may remain, but I doubt very much if my husband
will continue to live with me."

"But your marriage was a love marriage?"

"Yes, but that is a long time ago. It is four years ago."

"I don't think your husband will separate himself from you, but even so
I think--"

"You will give me absolution?"

She said this a little defiantly, and the priest wondered, and she left
the confessional perplexed and a little ashamed and very much terrified.

There was nothing for her to do in Dublin, she must go home and wait
for her husband. He was not coming home until evening, and she rode
home wondering how the day would pass, thinking the best time to tell
him would be after dinner when he left the piano. If he were very angry
with her she would go to her room. He would not go on living with her,
she was sure of that, and her heart seemed to stand still when she
entered the house and saw the study door open and Ned looking through
the papers.

"I have come back to look for some papers," he said. "It is very
annoying. I have lost half the day," and he went on looking among his
papers and she could see that he suspected nothing. "Do you know when
is the next train?"

She looked out the trains for him, and after he had found the papers he
wanted they went into the garden.

She talked of her flowers with the same interest as she had done many
times before, and when he asked her to go for a walk with him on the
hill she consented, although it was almost unbearable to walk with him
for the last time through the places where they had walked so often,
thinking that their lives would move on to the end unchanged; and they
walked about the hill talking of Irish history, their eyes often
resting on the slender outlines of Howth, until it was time for Ned to
go to the station.

"I shall be back in time for dinner. You will wait dinner a little for
me, I may have to come back by a later train."

And they walked down the hill together, Ned bidding her good-bye at the
garden gate, saying she had walked enough that day, and she feeling the
moment was at hand.

"But, Ned, why are you going to Dublin? You are only going to see
people who are anti-Catholic, who hate our religion, who are prejudiced
against it."

"But," he said, "why do you talk of these things. We have got on very
much better since we have ceased to discuss politics together. We are
agreed in everything else."

She did not answer for a long time and the