and his wounded pride gave him bitterness.

"My good girl," he said, "Catholics simply loathe it. And even,
personally, I think it's beastly."

"Well--I ..."

"I think it's beastly," said Frank didactically. "A good girl like you,
well-brought-up, good parents, nice home, religious--instead of which
"--he ended in a burst of ironical reminiscence--"you go traveling about
with a--" he checked himself--"a man who isn't your husband. Why don't
you marry him?"

"I can't!" wailed Gertie, suddenly stricken again with remorse; "his
wife's alive."

Frank jumped. Somehow that had never occurred to him. And yet how
amazingly characteristic of the Major!

"Well--leave him, then!"

"I can't!" cried poor Gertie. "I can't!... I can't!"

CHAPTER IV

(I)

Frank awoke with a start and opened his eyes.

But it was still dark and he could see nothing. So he turned over on the
other side and tried to go to sleep.

The three of them had come to this little town last night after two or
three days' regular employment; they had sufficient money between them;
they had found a quite tolerable lodging; they had their programme, such
as it was, for the next day or so; and--by the standard to which he had
learned to adjust himself--there was no sort of palpable cause for the
horror that presently fell on him. I can only conjecture that the origin
lay within, not without, his personality.

The trouble began with the consciousness that on the one side he was
really tired, and on the other that he could not sleep and, to clinch
it, the knowledge that a twenty-mile walk lay before him. He began to
tell himself that sleep was merely a question of will--of will
deliberately relaxing attention. He rearranged his position a little;
shifted his feet, fitted himself a little more closely into the
outlines of the bed, thrust one hand under the pillow and bade himself
let go.

Then the procession of thoughts began as orderly as if by signal.

He found himself presently, after enumerating all the minor physical
points of discomfort--the soreness of his feet, the knobbiness of the
bed, the stuffiness of the room in which the three were sleeping, the
sound of the Major's slow snoring--beginning to consider the wisdom of
the whole affair. This was a point that he had not consciously yet
considered, from the day on which he had left Cambridge. The impetus of
his first impulse and the extreme strength of his purpose had, up to the
prese