s your friend. The truth was
somehow borne in upon me. You were risking your honor--I threw myself
in the way."

Every word seemed to madden her.

"What--what could you know of the circumstances?" cried her choked,
laboring voice. "It is unpardonable--an outrage! You know nothing either
of him or of me."

She clasped her hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent gesture,
as though she were defending her lover and her love.

"I know that you have suffered much," he said, dropping his eyes before
her, "but you would suffer infinitely more if--"

"If you had not interfered." Her veil had fallen over her face again.
She flung it back in impatient despair. "Mr. Delafield, I can do without
your anxieties."

"But not"--he spoke slowly--"without your own self-respect."

Julie's face trembled. She hid it in her hands.

"Go!" she said. "Go!"

He went to the farther end of the ship and stood there motionless,
looking towards the land but seeing nothing. On all sides the darkness
was lifting, and in the distance there gleamed already the whiteness
that was Dover. His whole being was shaken with that experience which
comes so rarely to cumbered and superficial men--the intimate wrestle of
one personality with another. It seemed to him he was not worthy of it.

After some little time, when only a quarter of an hour lay between the
ship and Dover pier, he went back to Julie.

She was sitting perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her, her
veil drawn down.

"May I say one word to you?" he said, gently.

She did not speak.

"It is this. What I have confessed to you to-night is, of course, buried
between us. It is as though it had never been said. I have given you
pain. I ask your pardon from the bottom of my heart, and, at the same
time"--his voice trembled--"I thank God that I had the courage to
do it!"

She threw him a glance that showed her a quivering lip and the pallor of
intense emotion.

"I know you think you were right," she said, in a voice dull and
strained, "but henceforth we can only be enemies. You have tyrannized
over me in the name of standards that you revere and I reject. I can
only beg you to let my life alone for the future."

He said nothing. She rose, dizzily, to her feet. They were rapidly
approaching the pier.

[Illustration: "HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER"]

With the cold aloofness of one who feels it more dignified to submit
than to struggle, she allowed him to assist he