ot forgive for not having guarded you
better, for having been deceived by your husband. He spoke of you to
me very fully at the last when we both saw that his death was merely
a question of days. I saw then what I had sometimes suspected
before, that you had absorbed his whole life, that his devotion to
you was a kind of religion."

"He loved me?" she asked at last, in a hushed, strange voice, white
to the lips.

Oswyn bowed his head.

"Ever since you were a child. It was very beautiful, and it was with
him at the last as a light. Don't reproach yourself; it was to
prevent that that he wished you to be told."

"To prevent it!" she cried, with tragical scorn. "Am I not to
reproach myself that I was hard and callous and cold; that I never
understood nor cared; that I was not with him? Not reproach myself?
Oh, Philip, Philip!" she called, breaking down utterly, laying her
face in her hands.

Oswyn averted his eyes, giving her passion time to appease itself.
When he glanced at her again, she had gathered her cloak round her,
was standing by the picture from which she seemed loath to remove
her eyes.

"You gave him great happiness," he suggested gently, "in the only
manner in which it was possible. Remember only that. He must in any
case have died."

He imagined that she hardly heard him, absorbed in the desolation of
her own thought; and when she turned to him again, quite ready for
departure now, he saw by the hard light in her eyes that she had
recurred to her husband, to the irreparable gulf which must
henceforth divide them.

"I can't go back to him," she whispered, as if she communed with
herself. "I hate him; yes, I hate him, with my whole soul. He has
lied to me too much; he has made me do such a cruel wrong. There are
things which one can't forgive. Ah, no! it's not possible."

Oswyn viewed her compassionately, while a somewhat bitter smile
played about his mouth.

"No, you will go back, Mrs. Lightmark! Forgive me," he added,
raising his hand, interrupting her, as she seemed on the point of
speech. "I don't want to intrude on you--on your thoughts, with
advice or consolation. They are articles I don't deal in. Only I
will tell you--I who know--that in revolt also there is vanity. You
are bruised and broken and disillusioned, and you want to hide away
from the world and escape into yourself, or from yourself; it's all
the same. Ah, Mrs. Lightmark, believe me, in life that is not
possible, or where it