elcome to it."

"But you don't mean--" he got no further.

"I mean that your wife may have her reservations, just as we all have,
and I am paying her high praise when I say it. You are not so narrow,
Leroy, as to suppose for a moment that the only sort of passion a woman
is capable of is that which she entertains for a man. How do I know
what is going on in your wife's soul? But it is nothing which even an
idealist of women, such as I am, old fellow, need regret."

How glad I was afterward that I spoke those words. They exercised a
little restraint, perhaps, on Leroy when the day of his terrible trial
came. They made him wrestle with the demon of suspicion that strove to
possess him. I was sitting in my office, lagging dispiritedly over my
work one day, when the door burst open and Brainard stood beside me.
Brainard, I say, and yet in no sense the man I had known,--not a hint
in this pale creature, whose breath struggled through chattering teeth,
and whose hands worked in uncontrollable spasms, of the nonchalant
elegant I had known. Not a glimpse to be seen in those angry and
determined eyes of the gayly selfish spirit of my holiday friend.

"She's gone!" he gasped. "Since yesterday. And I'm here to ask you what
you think now? And what you know."

A panorama of all shameful possibilities for one black moment floated
before me. I remember this gave place to a wave, cold as death, that
swept from head to foot; then Brainard's hands fell heavily on my
shoulders.

"Thank God at least for this much," he said, hoarsely; "I didn't know at
first but I had lost both friend and wife. But I see you know nothing.
And indeed in my heart I knew all the time that you did not. Yet I had
to come to you with my anger. And I remembered how you defended her.
What explanation can you offer now?"

I got him to sit down after a while and tell me what little there was
to tell. He had been away for a day's shooting, and when he returned he
found only the perplexed servants at home. A note was left for him. He
showed it to me.

"There are times," it ran, "when we must do as we must, not as we would.
I am going to do something I have been driven to do since I left my
home. I do not leave any message of love for you, because you would not
care for it from a woman so weak as I. But it is so easy for you to be
happy that I hope in a little while you will forget the wife who yielded
to an influence past resisting. It may be madness, but I am