st friend,' I said, after a silence. 'Perhaps I know more of the
world than you think. Perhaps I'm a girl only in years and situation.
Forgive me if I speak plainly. Mary may prove unfaithfulness, but she
cannot get a decree unless she can prove other things as well.'

He stroked his forehead. As for me, I shuddered with agitation. He walked
across the room and back.

'Angel!' he said, putting his white face close to mine like an actor. 'I
will prove whether your love for me is great enough. I have struck her. I
struck her to-night in the presence of a servant. And I did it purposely,
in cold blood, so that she might be able to prove cruelty. Ah! Have I
not thought it all out? Have I not?'

A sob, painfully escaping, shook my whole frame.

'And this was before you had--had spoken to me!' I said bitterly.

Not myself, but some strange and frigid force within me uttered
those words.

'That is what love will do. That is the sort of thing love drives one
to,' he cried despairingly. 'Oh! I was not sure of you--I was not sure of
you. I struck her, on the off chance.'

And he sank on the sofa and wept passionately, unashamed, like a child.

I could not bear it. My heart would have broken if I had watched, without
assuaging, my boy's grief an instant longer than I did. I sprang to him.
I took him to my breast. I kissed his eyes until the tears ceased to
flow. Whatever it was or might be, I must share his dishonour.

'My poor girl!' he said at length. 'If you had refused me, if you had
even judged me, I intended to warn you plainly that it meant my death;
and if that failed, I should have gone to the office and shot myself.'

'Do not say such things,' I entreated him.

'But it is true. The revolver is in my pocket. Ah! I have made you cry!
You're frightened! But I'm not a brute; I'm only a little beside myself.
Pardon me, angel!'

He kissed me, smiling sadly with a trace of humour. He did not understand
me. He did not suspect the risk he had run. If I had hesitated to
surrender, and he had sought to move me by threatening suicide, I should
never have surrendered. I knew myself well enough to know that. I had a
conscience that was incapable of yielding to panic. A threat would have
parted us, perhaps for ever. Oh, the blindness of man! But I forgave him.
Nay, I cherished him the more for his childlike, savage simplicity.

'Carlotta,' he said, 'we shall leave everything. You grasp
it?--everything.'

'Yes,' I replie