ises his hand and deliberately
strikes her. Not violently, not severely, but still with sufficient
force to make her stagger backwards and catch hold of a chair to keep
her from falling.

He is gone: and she, stunned, quivering, half blind with nervous
horror, still stands by the chair and tries to realize all that has
passed. As she draws a deep breath, she places her hand, with a
spasmodic movement, to her left side, as though to quell some darting
pain that lies there. The action brings back consciousness, and that
saddest of all things, memory.

"He did not mean it," she whispers to herself, with white set lips.
"It was not a blow; it was only that he wished to put me to one side,
and I was in his way, no doubt: I angered him by my persistency.
Darling! How could I think that he would hurt me?"

Languid, heart-broken, she creeps to her bed, and, flinging herself
upon it, dressed as she is, sleeps heavily until the morn, "diffusing
round a trembling flood of light," wakes her to grief once more.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

"Have mind that eild aye follows youth;
Death follows life with gaping mouth;
Sen erdly joy abidis never,
Work for the joy that lastis ever;
For other joy is all but vain,
And erdly joy returns in pain."--W. DUNBAR.

Something within her knows he will return. Yet all the next day long
she sits in terrible suspense, not being certain of the end. Towards
noon he comes, sullen, disdainful, and dark with depression.

He sinks into a chair, looking tired and careworn.

"You have over-fatigued yourself?" she says, gently, going over to him
and touching his hand lightly.

"No. I have been to Pullingham again and back; that is all."

"There again?" she says. "And you saw----?"

"Only Dorian. Don't trouble yourself about Clarissa," he says, with an
unpleasant laugh: "that game is played out. No, Dorian, alone, I went
to see." He shades his face with his hand, and then goes on: "There
are few like him in the world. In spite of all that has come and gone,
he received me kindly, and has given me what will enable me to
commence life afresh in a foreign land." There is remorse and deep
admiration in his tone.

But Ruth makes no reply: she cannot. Those last words, "a foreign
land," have struck like a dying knell upon her heart. She watches him
in despairing silence, as he walks restlessly up and down the room in
the uncertain twilight.

Presently he stops close to her.

"I suppose t