to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing! All I
feared was to bring notoriety, scandal, on the family--on you and May."

"Good God," he groaned again, bowing his face in his hands.

The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things final
and irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his
own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever
lift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or
raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into
utter darkness.

"At least I loved you--" he brought out.

On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposed
that she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like a
child's. He started up and came to her side.

"Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing's done that can't
be undone. I'm still free, and you're going to be." He had her in his
arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain
terrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise. The one thing that
astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes
arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her
made everything so simple.

She gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt her
stiffening in his arms, and she put him aside and stood up.

"Ah, my poor Newland--I suppose this had to be. But it doesn't in the
least alter things," she said, looking down at him in her turn from the
hearth.

"It alters the whole of life for me."

"No, no--it mustn't, it can't. You're engaged to May Welland; and I'm
married."

He stood up too, flushed and resolute. "Nonsense! It's too late for
that sort of thing. We've no right to lie to other people or to
ourselves. We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying
May after this?"

She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, her
profile reflected in the glass behind her. One of the locks of her
chignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggard
and almost old.

"I don't see you," she said at length, "putting that question to May.
Do you?"

He gave a reckless shrug. "It's too late to do anything else."

"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment--not
because it's true. In reality it's too late to do anything but what
we'd both decided on."

"Ah, I don't understand you!"

She forced a pitiful smile that pinched