--?"

He interrupted her. "I thought it was a fundamental article of our
creed that the special circumstances produced by marriage were not to
interfere with the full assertion of individual liberty." He paused a
moment. "I thought that was your reason for leaving Arment."

She flushed to the forehead. It was not like him to give a personal
turn to the argument.

"It was my reason," she said simply.

"Well, then--why do you refuse to recognize its validity now?"

"I don't--I don't--I only say that one can't judge for others."

He made an impatient movement. "This is mere hair-splitting. What you
mean is that, the doctrine having served your purpose when you needed
it, you now repudiate it."

"Well," she exclaimed, flushing again, "what if I do? What does it
matter to us?"

Westall rose from his chair. He was excessively pale, and stood before
his wife with something of the formality of a stranger.

"It matters to me," he said in a low voice, "because I do _not_
repudiate it."

"Well--?"

"And because I had intended to invoke it as"--

He paused and drew his breath deeply. She sat silent, almost deafened
by her heart-beats.--"as a complete justification of the course I am
about to take."

Julia remained motionless. "What course is that?" she asked.

He cleared his throat. "I mean to claim the fulfilment of your promise."

For an instant the room wavered and darkened; then she recovered a
torturing acuteness of vision. Every detail of her surroundings pressed
upon her: the tick of the clock, the slant of sunlight on the wall, the
hardness of the chair-arms that she grasped, were a separate wound to
each sense.

"My promise--" she faltered.

"Your part of our mutual agreement to set each other free if one or the
other should wish to be released."

She was silent again. He waited a moment, shifting his position
nervously; then he said, with a touch of irritability: "You acknowledge
the agreement?"

The question went through her like a shock. She lifted her head to it
proudly. "I acknowledge the agreement," she said.

"And--you don't mean to repudiate it?"

A log on the hearth fell forward, and mechanically he advanced and
pushed it back.

"No," she answered slowly, "I don't mean to repudiate it."

There was a pause. He remained near the hearth, his elbow resting on
the mantel-shelf. Close to his hand stood a little cup of jade that he
had given her on one of their wedding anniversaries. She wo