seemed all the beauty of the world reached
him. Marion's beauty was a definite separate thing; his face went tender
as he thought how Ruth Holland only grew beautiful in beauty, as if it
broke through her, making her.

Once more he moved sharply, disturbing the little dog at his feet; he
realized where his thoughts had again gone, how looking at his wife it
was to this other girl he was drawn, she seeming near him and Marion
apart. He grew miserable in a growing feeling of helplessness, in a
sense of waiting disaster. It was as if the whole power of life was
drawing him on to disaster. Again that bird call floated through the
dusk; the gentle breeze stirred the fragrance of flowers; it came to
seem that the world was beautiful that it might ensnare him, as if the
whole power of the sweetness of life was trying to pull him over where
he must not go. He grew afraid. He got the feeling that he must do
something--that he must do it at once. After he had sat there brooding
for half an hour he abruptly got up and walked in where his wife was
sitting.

"Marion," he began brusquely, "I should like to speak to you."

She had been sitting with her back to the door; at his strange address
of her she turned round in surprise; she looked startled when she saw
his strained face.

"We've been married about six years, isn't it?"

He had come a little nearer, but remained standing. He still spoke in
that rough way. She did not reply but nodded slightly, flushing.

"And now for two years we--haven't been married?"

She stiffened and there was a slight movement as if drawing back. She
did not answer.

"I'm thirty-four and you're a little less than that." He paused and it
was more quietly, though none the less tensely that he asked: "Is it
your idea that we go through life like this?"

She was gathering together the sheets of paper on her desk. She did not
speak.

"You were angry at me--disappointed. I grant you, as I did at the time,
that it was a silly affair, not--not creditable. I tried to show you how
little it meant, how it had--just happened. Two years have passed; we
are still young people. I want to know--do you intend this to go on? Are
our whole lives to be spoiled by a mere silly episode?"

She spoke then. "Mere silly episode," she said with a high little laugh,
"seems rather a slight way to dispose of the fact that you were untrue
to me." She folded her letter and was putting it in the envelope. It
would not go i