before you told me this I could love you now for the
part you have taken; but"--He stopped.

"You love her still," she burst out, "and I might have known it.
Perhaps," she went on distractedly, "you love her the more that you have
lost her. It is the way of men--and women."

"If I had loved her truly," said Barker, lifting his frank eyes to hers,
"I could not have touched YOUR lips. I could not even have wished to--as
I did three years ago--as I did last night. Then I feared it was my
weakness, now I know it was my love. I have thought of it ever since,
even while waiting my wife's return here, knowing that I did not and
never could have loved her. But for that very reason I must try to save
her for her own sake, if I cannot save her for mine; and if I fail,
dearest, it shall not be said that we climbed to happiness over her
back bent with the burden of her shame. If I loved you and told you so,
thinking her still guiltless and innocent, how could I profit now by her
fault?"

Mrs. Horncastle saw too late her mistake. "Then you would take her
back?" she said frenziedly.

"To my home--which is hers--yes. To my heart--no. She never was there."

"And I," said Mrs. Horncastle, with a quivering lip,--"where do I
go when you have settled this? Back to my past again? Back to my
husbandless, childless life?"

She was turning away, but Barker caught her in his arms again. "No!"
he said, his whole face suddenly radiating with hope and youthful
enthusiasm. "No! Kitty will help us; we will tell her all. You do not
know her, dearest, as I do--how good and kind she is, in spite of all.
We will appeal to her; she will devise some means by which, without the
scandal of a divorce, she and I may be separated. She will take dear
little Sta with her--it is only right, poor girl; but she will let me
come and see him. She will be a sister to us, dearest. Courage! All will
come right yet. Trust to me."

An hysterical laugh came to Mrs. Horncastle's lips and then stopped.
For as she looked up at him in his supreme hopefulness, his divine
confidence in himself and others--at his handsome face beaming with
love and happiness, and his clear gray eyes glittering with an almost
spiritual prescience--she, woman of the world and bitter experience,
and perfectly cognizant of her own and Kitty's possibilities, was,
nevertheless, completely carried away by her lover's optimism. For of
all optimism that of love is the most convincing. Dear boy!--f