ders. "It's a lever. I am glad to be
rich; my father worked hard for his money--it was honourably gained, and
I'm proud to inherit it. It is a responsibility, a heavy one, if you
like, but one is bound to have responsibilities in life, and it's a fine
thing to have one which holds such possibilities. I mean to bring up
the boys to take that view. But--" he paused heavily--"I'd give it up
to-morrow if it could purchase peace and tranquillity, a rest from this
everlasting strain!"

Something tightened over Joan's heart; a chill as of fear passed through
her blood. Geoffrey spoke quietly, so sanely, with an unmistakable air
of knowing his own mind. And his manner was so cool, so detached, not
one lover-like word or action had he vouchsafed in answer to her own. A
chill passed through Joan's veins, the chill of dismay which presages
disaster. At that moment she divined the certainty of what she had
never before even dimly imagined--the waning of her husband's love.
Like too many beautiful young wives, she had taken for granted that her
place in her husband's heart was established for life, independent of
any effort to retain it. She had not realised that love is a treasure
which must needs be guarded with jealous care, that the delicate cord
may be strained so thin that a moment may come when it reaches
breaking-point. That moment had not come yet; surely, surely, it could
not have come, but she felt the shadow.

"Don't you love me any more, Geoffrey?" she asked faintly. "In spite of
all my faults, do you love me still like you did?"

It was the inevitable ending to a dissension, the inevitable question
which he had answered a hundred times, and if to-day there was a new
tone in the voice which spoke it, Geoffrey was not sensitive enough to
notice. Few men would mark such differences in a moment of tension.

"I love you, Joan," he answered wearily. "You are my wife; but you've
rubbed off the bloom!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joan got up quietly from her knees and crossed to the door. The voice
within declared that Geoffrey would call her back, that he would leap
after her and clasp her in his arms, as he had done a score of times in
like circumstances, that he would implore forgiveness for his cruel
words. She walked slowly, pausing as she went to put a chair against
the wall, to alter the position of a vase of flowers. She reached the
door and cast a s