for pity.
"Hubert," she sobbed out, "don't take it as real. You're the best
husband there could ever be. I wrote like you do. It was only----"

"My God!" he cried, clutching her arms roughly. "You _didn't_ write
it? You didn't----" He broke off and let go of her, holding her one
moment at arm's length. She never could forget his eyes.

He stooped and picked up the cutting. He read it slowly through, as if
that might help--or possibly to calm himself. Helena fell limply on
the sofa. Minutes seemed to pass in silence.

Suddenly he crumpled up the little roll of paper and hurled it in the
fireplace. Then he laughed and that alarmed her more than anything.

"Well," he said, trying to speak naturally, "that's that, then. It's
no use having scenes, is it?" He stood very still, looking vacantly
before him as though not realising what it meant.

"Hubert," she began again, as though in some way his name was a shield,
and went to him, "let me explain----" but he waved her aside.

"What's the use?" he said gloomily. "It's all so obvious. The gutter
Press has let itself go over me for weeks as the mysterious,
self-centred Husband; the man who sacrificed his wife! I don't see why
you should explain. It only makes things worse."

"But you don't see," she answered. "The husband wasn't you, any more
than people in your novels. I wrote it--wrote it just for fun" (he
snorted with an irony that even she observed), "never meaning the Press
or any one--and then one day Mr. Alison----"

"Oh, _he_ was in it?" Hubert asked with a swift passion. The old
antipathy revived. That young ass always _had_ been in it, somehow.

"He promised never to tell any one," said Helena. "You know, we wanted
money so."

He laughed scornfully. "Oh yes, we wanted money. Money's everything.
So long as we have money, what does it matter everybody knowing you
think me a selfish brute or that----?" He broke off abruptly.

It was clear that he mastered himself only with an effort. "Have you
_got_ the book?" he asked with an icy calmness, presently. "I suppose
as your husband I've the right to read it?"

She could not answer. Somehow she got to the door, to her own room;
unlocked her jewel-case and took from it the loathsome little book in
its clean, innocent, green cover: then she went down and handed it
without a word to him.

"So this is it?" he said with all Scorn in the words. He opened it at
random. "'I am the backgrou