bush. Didn't he tell you it was I who
published Mrs. Aubyn's letters? Answer me that."

"No," she said; and after a moment which seemed given to the weighing of
alternatives, she added: "No one told me."

"You didn't know then?"

She seemed to speak with an effort. "Not until--not until--"

"Till I gave you those papers to sort?"

Her head sank.

"You understood then?"

"Yes."

He looked at her immovable face. "Had you suspected--before?" was slowly
wrung from him.

"At times--yes--" Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Why? From anything that was said--?"

There was a shade of pity in her glance. "No one said anything--no one
told me anything." She looked away from him. "It was your manner--"

"My manner?"

"Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said--once or twice--your
irritation--I can't explain--"

Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He breathed like a man who
has been running. "You knew, then, you knew"--he stammered. The avowal
of her love for Flamel would have hurt him less, would have rendered
her less remote. "You knew--you knew--" he repeated; and suddenly his
anguish gathered voice. "My God!" he cried, "you suspected it first, you
say--and then you knew it--this damnable, this accursed thing; you knew
it months ago--it's months since I put that paper in your way--and yet
you've done nothing, you've said nothing, you've made no sign, you've
lived alongside of me as if it had made no difference--no difference in
either of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don't you see the
hideous ignominy of it? Don't you see how you've shared in my disgrace?
Or haven't you any sense of shame?"

He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured from him, to see
how fatally they invited her derision; but something told him they had
both passed beyond the phase of obvious retaliations, and that if any
chord in her responded it would not be that of scorn.

He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him.

"Haven't you had enough--without that?" she said, in a strange voice of
pity.

He stared at her. "Enough--?"

"Of misery...."

An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. "You saw then...?" he
whispered.

"Oh, God----oh, God----" she sobbed. She dropped beside him and hid
her anguish against his knees. They clung thus in silence, a long time,
driven together down the same fierce blast of shame.

When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her scorn would have
h