of illustration was always worth to him a
pound of theory! Dolly was given to riding off on theories. Thank God!
she never acted on 'em!

He said gently:

"My dear! Young Lennan may be an artist and all that, but he's a
gentleman! I know old Heatherley, his guardian. Why I introduced him to
Olive myself!"

"What has that to do with it? He's in love with her."

One of the countless legion that hold a creed taken at face value, into
whose roots and reasons they have never dreamed of going, the Colonel
was staggered. Like some native on an island surrounded by troubled
seas, which he has stared at with a certain contemptuous awe all his
life, but never entered, he was disconcerted by thus being asked to
leave the shore. And by his own wife!

Indeed, Mrs. Ercott had not intended to go so far; but there was in
her, as in all women whose minds are more active than their husbands',
a something worrying her always to go a little farther than she meant.
With real compunction she heard the Colonel say:

"I must get up and drink some water."

She was out of bed in a moment. "Not without boiling!"

She had seriously troubled him, then! Now he would not sleep--the blood
went to his head so quickly. He would just lie awake, trying not to
disturb her. She could not bear him not to disturb her. It seemed so
selfish of her! She ought to have known that the whole subject was too
dangerous to discuss at night.

She became conscious that he was standing just behind her; his figure in
its thin covering looked very lean, his face strangely worn.

"I'm sorry you put that idea into my head!" he said. "I'm fond of
Olive."

Again Mrs. Ercott felt that jealous twinge, soon lost this time in
the motherliness of a childless woman for her husband. He must not be
troubled! He should not be troubled. And she said:

"The water's boiling! Now sip a good glass slowly, and get into bed, or
I'll take your temperature!"

Obediently the Colonel took from her the glass, and as he sipped, she
put her hand up and stroked his head.

IV

In the room below them the subject of their discussion was lying very
wide awake. She knew that she had betrayed herself, made plain to
Mark Lennan what she had never until now admitted to herself. But the
love-look, which for the life of her she could not keep back, had been
followed by a feeling of having 'lost caste.' For, hitherto, the world
of women had been strictly divided by her into those who did