kward for you to see him here,
wouldn't it?'

'Yes, yes,' she said, her eyes softening and gleaming with joy. 'I will
go. Oh, Carlotta! how can I thank you? You are my best friend.'

'I have done nothing,' I protested. But I had.

'You are a dear!' she exclaimed, coming impulsively to the bed.

I sat up. She kissed me fervently. I rang the bell.

'Has Mr. Ispenlove gone?' I asked Emmeline.

'Yes,' said Emmeline.

In another minute his wife, too, had departed, timorously optimistic,
already denying in her heart that it could never be the same between them
again. She assuredly would not find Frank at home. But that was nothing.
I had escaped! I had escaped!

'Will you mind getting dressed at once?' I said to Emmeline. 'I should
like you to go out with a letter and a manuscript as soon as possible.'

I got a notebook and began to write to Frank. I told him all that had
happened, in full detail, writing hurriedly, in gusts, and abandoning
that regard for literary form which the professional author is apt to
preserve even in his least formal correspondence.

'After this,' I said, 'we must give up what we decided last night. I have
no good reason to offer you. The situation itself has not been changed by
what I have learnt from your wife. I have not even discovered that she
loves you, though in spite of what she says, which I have faithfully told
you, I fancy she does--at any rate, I think she is beginning to. My ideas
about the rights of love are not changed. My feelings towards you are not
changed. Nothing is changed. But she and I have been through that
interview, and so, after all, everything is changed; we must give it all
up. You will say I am illogical. I am--perhaps. It was a mere chance
that your wife came to me. I don't know why she did. If she had not come,
I should have given myself to you. Supposing she had written--I should
still have given myself to you. But I have been in her presence. I have
been with her. And then the thought that you struck her, for my sake! She
said nothing about that. That was the one thing she concealed. I could
have cried when she passed it over. After all, I don't know whether it is
sympathy for your wife that makes me change, or my self-respect--say my
self-pride; I'm a proud woman. I lied to her through all that interview.

'Oh, if I had only had the courage to begin by telling her outright and
bluntly that you and I had settled that I should take her place! That
would ha