d changed even as he looked down at her, troubled by
the shadow of utter weariness that rested on her colorless face.

"What would we do, Jim," she asked, after a second long and unbroken
silence, "what would we do if this thing ever brought us face to face
with MacNutt again?"

"But why should we cross that bridge before we come to it?" was
Durkin's answer.

She seemed unable, however, to bar back from her mind some disturbing
and unwelcome vision of that meeting. She felt, in a way, that she
possessed one faculty which the rapid and impetuous nature of her
husband could not claim. It was almost a weakness in him, she told
herself, the subsidiary indiscretion of a fecund and grimly resourceful
mind. Like a river in flood, it had its strange and incongruous back
currents, born of its very oneness of too hurrying purpose. It
considered too deeply the imminent and not the remoter and seemingly
more trivial contingency.

"But can't you see, Jim, that the further we follow this up the closer
and closer it's bringing us to MacNutt?"

"MacNutt is ancient history to us now! We're over and done with him,
for all time!"

"You are wrong there, Jim. You misjudge the situation, and you
misjudge the man. That is one fact we have to face, one hard fact;
MacNutt is not over and done _with us_!"

"But haven't you made a sort of myth of him? Isn't he only a fable to
us now? And haven't we got real facts to face?"

"Ah," she said protestingly, "there is just the trouble. You always
refuse to look _this_ fact in the face!"

"Well, what are the facts?" he asked conciliatingly, coercing his
attention, and demanding of himself what allowance he must make for
that morbid perversion of view which came of a too fatigued body and
mind.

"The facts are these," she began, with a solemnity of tone that
startled him into keener attentiveness. "You found me in MacNutt's
office when he was planning and plotting and preparing for the biggest
wire-tapping _coup_ in all his career. You were dragged into that plot
against your will, almost, just as I had been. But MacNutt gave us our
parts, and we worked together there. Then--then you made love to
me--don't deny it, Jim, for, after all, it was the happiest part of all
my life!--and we both saw how wrong we were, and we both wanted to
fight for our freedom. So I followed you when you revolted against
MacNutt and his leadership."

"No, Frank, it was _you_ who led--if it hadn't