family
portraits smiling down on them from her walls, but the terrible
nerve-destroying anguish of a woman scorned. That was one of the things
in his life he never allowed himself to think about; but it would, in
moments of physical weariness, come beating at the door. He would hear
it leave the threshold while he sat, hands clenched and lips shut tight,
and go prowling round the house, peering in at him through the windows,
bidding him waken and remember. And when he did find himself forced to
remember before he could get out of doors and walk or ride, it was
always with an incredulous amazement that he had, in that moment of her
downfall, found the courage to withstand her. When the implacable ghost
of remembrance flashed on his mind the picture of her, face wet with
streaming tears, hands outstretched to him--beautiful hands, the product
of five generations of idleness and care--why did he not meet her
passion with some decency of response, swear he did love her, and spend
the rest of his life in making good? Would a lifetime of dogged
endurance be too much for a man to give, to save all this inherited
delicacy of type from the ruin of knowing it had betrayed itself and was
delicate no more?--the keenest pang it could feel in a world made, to
that circumscribed, over-cultured intelligence, for the nurture of such
flowers of life. He felt, as he stood there looking despairingly upon
her, as if he had seen all the manufactured expensiveness of the world,
lustrous silks, bloom of velvet, filigreed jewels, in rags and ruin. Yet
there was more, and this it was that had brought enduring remorse to his
mind. It was pride. That was in ruins. If she had assaulted him with the
reproaches of an unfed passion, there would have been some savage
response of rebuttal in him, to save them both from this meager sort of
shame. But what could heal in a man's mind the vision of a woman's
murdered pride, as deep as the pride of queens, in the days when the
world itself bowed its neck for queens to set their feet on? Nan was
looking at him curiously. He became aware of it, and returned to himself
with a start. He must, he judged, have been acting queerly. It had never
happened before that he had been under other eyes when the vision rose
to plague him.

"You've been such a long time without speaking," said Nan gently. "What
is it, Rookie dear?"

He shook his head. His forehead was damp with the sweat of his renewed
remorses.

"There'