s at her own. She perceived the vital inferiority of women to men--that
quality of callousness which allows them to commit all cruelties in the
name of self-sacrifice, and that lack of imagination by which they are
blinded to the wounds they deal. Women have brief moods in which they
judge themselves as men judge them, in which they escape from their sex
and know the truth. Such a mood came then to Leonora. And she wished
ardently to compensate Arthur for the martyrdom which she had inflicted
on him. They were close to one another. The atmosphere between them was
electric. And the darkness of a calm and delicious night was falling.
Could she not obey her instinct, and in one bright word, one word laden
with the invitation and acquiescence of femininity, atone for her sin
against him? Could she not shatter the images of Rose and Milly, who
loved her after their hard fashion, but who would never thank her for
her watchful affection--would even resent it? Vain hope!

'Oh!' she exclaimed grievously, trying uselessly to keep the dream of
joyous indulgence from fading away. 'I must tell you--I cannot leave
them!'

'Leave whom?'

'The girls--Rose and Milly. I daren't. You don't know what I went
through after John's death--and I can't desert them. I should have told
you in my next letter.'

Her tones moved not only him but herself. He was obliged at once to
receive what she said with the utmost seriousness, as something fully
weighed and considered.

'Do you mean,' he demanded, 'that you won't marry me and come to New
York?'

'I can't, I can't,' she replied.

He got up and walked along the garden towards the meadow, so far that in
the twilight her eyes could scarcely distinguish his figure against the
bushes. Then he returned.

'Just let me hear all about the girls.' He stood in front of her.

'You see,' she said entreatingly, when she had hurried through her
recital, 'I couldn't leave them, could I?'

But instead of answering, he questioned her further about Milly's
projects, and made suggestions, and they seemed to have been discussing
the complex subject for an hour before she found a chance to reassert,
plaintively: 'I couldn't leave them.'

'You're entirely wrong,' he said firmly and authoritatively. 'You've
just got an idea fixed in your head, and it's all wrong, all wrong.'

'It isn't as if they were going to be married,' she obstinately pursued
the sequence of her argument. 'Ethel now----'

'Married!' h