her
heart against.

Pocahontas gazed at him in bewilderment, her mind grappling with an
idea that appalled her, her face blanching with apprehension, and her
form cowering as from an expected blow.

"Must I understand, Mr. Thorne, that love for _me_ suggested the
thought of divorcing your wife?" she questioned hoarsely--"that _I_
came between you and caused this horrible thing? It is _not_--it _can
not_ be true. God above! Have I fallen so low?--am I guilty of this
terrible sin?"

Thorne's quick brain recognized instantly the danger of allowing this
idea to obtain possession of her mind. Fool! he thought furiously, why
had not he been more cautious, more circumspect. Dextrously he set
himself to remove the idea or weaken its force--to prove her guiltless
in her own eyes.

"Princess," he said, meeting the honest, agonized eyes squarely, "I
want to tell you the story of my marriage with Ethel Ross, and of my
subsequent life with her. I had not intended to harass you with it
until later--if at all; but now, I deem it best you should become
acquainted with it, and from my lips. It will explain many things."

Then he briefly related all the miserable commonplace story. He
glossed over nothing, palliated nothing; bearing hardly now on his
wife, and again on himself, but striving to show throughout how opposed
to true marriage was this marriage, how far removed from a perfect
union was this union. Pocahontas listened with intense, strained
interest, following every word, sometimes almost anticipating them.
Her heart ached for him--ached wearily. Life had been so hard upon
him; he had suffered so. With a woman's involuntary hardness to woman,
she raised the blame from Thorne's shoulders and heaped it upon those
of his wife. Her love and her sympathy became his advocates and
pleaded for him at the bar of her judgment. Her heart yearned over him
with infinite compassion.

If Thorne had kept silence, and left the matter there, and waited until
she should have adapted herself to the new conditions, should have
assimilated the new influences, which crowded thick upon her, it would
have been better. But he could not keep silent--he had no patience to
wait. He could not realize that the things which were as a thrice-told
tale to _him_, had an overwhelming newness for _her_. That the
influences which had molded his thought, were very far removed from the
influences which had made _her_ what she was. He could n