n
he had risen, he stood looking down at his wife's beautiful dusky head.
Incredible to think it had ever lain on his breast, or that the fact of
its cherishing there made no difference to her embryo heart! A tinge of
irony came into his voice. "And I am willing to assure Madame Beattie,"
he proceeded, "in the way of evidence, that you have not in any sense
taken me back, nor have you condoned anything I may have done."

As he was opening the outer door, in a confusion of mind that
communicated itself disturbingly to his eyes and ears, he seemed to hear
Madame Beattie adjuring Esther ruthlessly not to be a fool.

"Why, he's a man, you little fool," he heard her say, not with passion
but a negligent scorn ample enough to cover all the failings of their
common sex. "He's more of a man than he was when he went into that
hideous place. And after all, who sent him there?"

Jeff walked out and closed the door behind him with an exaggerated care.
It hardly seemed as if he had the right, except in a salutary
humbleness, even to touch a door which shut in Esther to the gods of
home. He went back to his father's house, and there was Lydia singing as
she dusted the library. He walked in blindly not knowing whether she was
alone; but here was a face and a voice, and his heart was sore. Lydia,
at sight of him, laid down her cloth and came to meet him. Neither did
she think whether they were alone, though she did remember afterward
that Farvie had gone into the orchard for his walk. Seeing Jeff's face,
she knew some mortal hurt was at work within him, and like a child, she
went to him, and Jeff put his face down on her cheek, and his cheek, she
felt, was wet. And so they stood, their arms about each other, and
Lydia's heart beat in such a sick tumult of rage and sorrow that it
seemed to her she could not stand so and uphold the heavy weight of his
grief. In a minute she whispered to him:

"Have you seen her?"

"Yes."

"Was she--cruel?"

"Don't! don't!" Jeff said, in a broken voice.

"Do you love her?" she went on, in an inexorable fierceness.

"No! no! no!" And then a voice that did not seem to be his and yet was
his, came from him and overthrew all his old traditions of what he had
been and what he must therefore be: "I only love you."

Then, Lydia knew, when she thought of it afterward, in a burning wonder,
they kissed, and their tears and the kiss seemed as one, a bond against
the woman who had been cruel to him and an