ternative but to obey. Wingrave handed a chair to
Lady Ruth. He was looking at her steadfastly. There were no signs of any
sort of emotion in his face. Whatever their relations in the past might
have been, it was hard to believe, from his present demeanor, that he
felt any.

"Wingrave," she said softly, "are you going to be unkind to me--you,
whom I have always thought of in my dreams as the most generous of men!
I have looked forward so much to seeing you again--to knowing that you
were free! Don't disappoint me!"

Wingrave laughed shortly, and Aynesworth bent closer over his work,
with a gathering frown upon his forehead. A mirthless laugh is never a
pleasant sound.

"Disappoint you!" he repeated calmly. "No! I must try and avoid that!
You have been looking forward with so much joy to this meeting then? I
am flattered."

She shivered a little.

"I have looked forward to it," she answered, and her voice was dull and
lifeless with pain. "But you are not glad to see me," she continued.
"There is no welcome in your face! You are changed--altogether! Why did
you send for me?"

"Listen!"

There was a moment's silence. Wingrave was standing upon the hearthrug,
cold, passionless, Sphinx-like. Lady Ruth was seated a few feet away,
but her face was hidden.

"You owe me something!" he said.

"Owe--you something?" she repeated vaguely.

"Do you deny it?" he said.

"Oh, no, no!" she declared with emotion. "Not for a moment."

"I want," he said, "to give you an opportunity of repaying some portion
of that debt!"

She raised her eyes to his. Her whispered words came so softly that they
were almost inaudible.

"I am waiting," she said. "Tell me what I can do!"

He commenced to speak at some length, very impassively, very
deliberately.

"You will doubtless appreciate the fact," he said, "that my position,
today, is a somewhat peculiar one. I have had enough of solitude. I am
rich! I desire to mix once more on equal terms amongst my fellows. And
against that, I have the misfortune to be a convicted felon, who has
spent the last ten or a dozen years amongst the scum of the earth,
engaged in degrading tasks, and with no identity save a number. The
position, as you will doubtless observe, is a difficult one."

Her eyes fell from his. Once more she shivered, as though with physical
pain. Something that was like a smile, only that it was cold and
lifeless, flitted across his lips.

"I have no desire," he continued,