ld nerves were strung taut. She had
passed through many phases of feeling with regard to him as the years had
gone by. During those years she had believed that she knew a hidden thing
of him known by no other person. She had felt herself a sort of silent
detective in the form of an astute old New England gentlewoman. She had
abhorred and horribly pitied him. She had the clear judicial mind which
must inevitably see the tragic pitifulness of things. She had thought too
much to be able to indulge in the primitive luxury of unqualified
condemnation. As she watched him to-day during their drive through the
streets, she realised that she beheld a kind of suffering not coming
under the head of any ordinary classification. It was a hopeless, ghastly
thing, a breaking up of life, a tearing loose of all the cords to which a
man might anchor his existence.

When they reached the house and entered the parlour, she went to her
chair and sat down--and waited. She knew she was waiting, and believed
she knew what for. In a vague way she had always felt that an hour like
this would come to them. They were somehow curiously akin. Baird began to
walk to and fro. His lips were trembling. Presently he turned towards the
rigid figure in the chair and stood still.

"It was not an accident," he said. "He killed himself."

"That I felt sure of," Miss Amory answered. "Tell me why he did it."

Baird began to tremble a little himself.

"Yes, I will," he said. "I must. I suppose--there is a sort of hysteric
luxury in--confession. He did it because there was nothing else left. The
foundations of his world had been torn from under his feet. Everything
was gone." His voice broke into a savage cry. "Oh! in one short
lifetime--the black misery a man can bring about!"

"Yes," said Miss Amory.

He threw himself into a chair near her.

"For years--years," he said, "he hid a secret." Miss Amory bent forward.
She felt she must help him a little--for pity's sake.

"Was it the secret of Margery?" she half whispered.

"Did you know it?"

"When a woman has spent a long life alone, thinking--thinking," she
answered, "she has had time to learn to observe and to work at problems.
The day she fainted in the street and I took her home in my carriage, I
began to fear--to guess. She was not only a girl who was ill--she was a
child who was being _killed_ with some horror; she was heart-breaking. I
used to go and see her. In the end I knew."

"I--did not,"