und it impossible to forgive herself.

"I always belonged to you, you see, dear," Christopher said very gently,
"and you had the right to do what you liked with your own. I had given
you the right of my own free will."

"But you couldn't give me the right to do what was wrong. Nobody can do
that. I did what was wrong, and now I must be punished for it."

"Not if I can help it, sweetheart. You shall never be punished for
anything if I can bear the punishment for you."

"You can't help it, Chris; that's just the point. And I am being
punished in the way that hurts most. All my life I thought of myself,
and my own success, and how I was going to do this and that and the
other, and be happy and clever and good. But suddenly everything has
changed. I no longer care about being happy myself; I only want you to
be happy; and yet I know that for ten long years I deliberately
prevented you from being happy. Don't you see, dear, how terrible the
punishment is? The thing I care for most in the whole world is your
happiness; and the fact remains, and will always remain, that that was
the thing which I destroyed with my own hands, because I was cruel and
selfish and cold."

"Still, I am happy enough now, Betty--happy enough to make up for all
that went before."

"But I can never give you back those ten years," said Elisabeth, with a
sob in her voice--"never as long as I live. Oh! Chris, I see now how
horrid I was; though all the time I thought I was being so good, that I
looked down upon the women who I considered had lower ideals than I had.
I built myself an altar of stone, and offered up your life upon it, and
then commended myself when the incense rose up to heaven; and I never
found out that the sacrifice was all yours, and that there was nothing
of mine upon the altar at all."

"Never mind, darling; there isn't going to be a yours and mine any more,
you know. All things are ours, and we are beginning a new life
together."

Elisabeth put both arms round his neck and kissed him of her own accord.
"My dearest," she whispered, "how can I ever love you enough for being
so good to me?"

But while Christopher and Elisabeth were walking across enchanted
ground, Cecil Farquhar was having a hard time. Elisabeth had written to
tell him the actual facts of the case almost as soon as she knew them
herself; and he could not forgive her for first raising his hopes and
then dashing them to the ground. And there is no denying that h