how much.--I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?"

"I have cared. You have been all that is beautiful.--I have cared more
than for anything.--But--oh, it could not have been this.--This would
have killed me with shame," said Amabel.

"With shame? Why, you strange angel?"

"Can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice.

His hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you
saint.--Does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?"

"Don't--oh don't--call it that--call me that!--"

"Call you a saint? But what else are you?--a beautiful saint. What other
woman could have lived the life you've lived? It's wonderful."

"Don't. I cannot bear it."

"Can't bear to be called a saint? Ah, but, you see, that's just why you
are one."

She could not speak. She could not even say the only answering word: a
sinner. Her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. In the
darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to
catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts.

And as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband
murmured: "It makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that.
It makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. Let me
make you forget it. I can.--Darling, your beautiful hair. I remember
it;--it is as beautiful as ever.--I remember it;--it fell to your
knees.--Let me see your face, Amabel."

She was shuddering, shrinking from him.--"Oh--no--no.--Do you not
see--not feel--that it is impossible--"

"Impossible! Why?--My darling, you are my wife;--and if you love me?--"

They were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one
that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous,
accusing. She seized it:--"Augustine."

"Augustine? What of him?" Sir Hugh's voice had an edge to it.

"He could not bear it. It would break his heart."

"What has he to do with it? He isn't all your life:--you've given him
most of it already."

"He is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you
were:--that you are:--oh you will stay my friend!"--

"I'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, Amabel.
Darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting--with your barriers, your
scruples." The fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to
flame. His arms once more went round her; he murmured words of
lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. And, though her love