ung
a low sob from the woman at his side.

He woke. His hand searched for her hand. At his touch she drew it away,
and moved from under her cramped shoulder the thick, warm braid of her
hair. It tossed a gleam of pale gold to the risen light. She felt his
drowsy, affectionate fingers pressing and smoothing the springy bosses of
the braid.

The caress kindled her dull thoughts to a point of flame. She sat up and
twisted the offending braid into a rigid coil.

"Walter," she said, "_who_ is Lady Cayley?"

She noticed that the name waked him.

"Does it matter now? Can't you forget her?"

"Forget her? I know nothing about her. I want to know."

"Haven't you been told everything that was necessary?"

"I've been told nothing. It was what I heard."

There was a terrible stillness about him. Only his breath came and went
unsteadily, shaken by the beating of his heart.

She quieted her own heart to listen to it; as if she could gather from
such involuntary motions the thing she had to know.

"I know," she said, "I oughtn't to have heard it. And I can't believe
it,--I don't, really."

"Poor child! What is it that you don't believe?"

His calm, assured tones had the force of a denial.

"Walter--if you'd only say it isn't true--"

"What Edith told you?"

"Edith? Your sister? No; about that woman--that you--that she--"

"Why are you bringing all that up again, at this unearthly hour?"

"Then," she said coldly, "it _is_ true."

His silence lay between them like a sword.

She had rehearsed this scene many times in the five hours; but she had
not prepared herself for this. Her dread had been held captive by her
belief, her triumphant anticipation of Majendie's denial.

Presently he spoke; and his voice was strange to her as the voice of
another man.

"Anne," he said, "didn't she tell you? It was before I knew you. And it
was the only time."

"Don't speak to me," she cried with a sudden passion, and lay shuddering.

She rose, slipped from the bed, and went to a chair that stood by the
open window. There she sat, with her back to the bed, and her eyes
staring over the grey parade and out to the eastern sea.

"Anne," said her husband, "what are you doing there?"

Anne made no answer.

"Come back to bed; you'll catch cold."

He waited.

"How long are you going to sit there in that draught?"

She sat on, upright, immovable, in her thin nightgown, raked by the keen
air of the dawn. Majendie raised himsel