ary appearance. With a visible
shudder he crossed the middle of the room where the coffin had stood,
and threw open the windows. Then he went out, closing the door
carefully. In the passage he listened a moment, but it was still
silent. He knew that the child had been sent to a neighbor's, and that
he should find his wife in her own room.

He found her sitting by the window. She did not move as he entered,
and he stood near her for some moments waiting vainly for some sign
that she was aware of his presence. Then he spoke her name.

She turned slightly toward him. That was all.

Dixon threw himself upon a chair near her, with a groan.

"Barbara!" he cried, in a voice of anguish, "Barbara! Is this all you
have to give me?"

She turned toward him a wan, drawn face with dazed, tearless eyes that
seemed to look at him as from afar off.

"I trusted you so completely," she said, her words falling as slowly
and coldly as the snowflakes outside, "so completely! I never knew
that such things _could_ be! I shall never forgive myself that I
believed him guilty, never! I shall never forgive myself that I helped
to drive him to despair. I shall never forgive----"

"Don't say it, Barbara! For _God's_ sake, don't say it!" her husband
cried, throwing himself at her feet, and burying his face upon her
lap. He felt her whole body recoil from his touch, and shrank back,
hiding his face upon his arms.

"I was such a child," she went on, "such a foolish, weak child--but I
might have known better. I shall never forgive myself!"

Dixon groaned aloud. "But I am ready, quite ready," she continued in
the same voice.

"Ready?"

He started up, and stared at her wildly. He feared for her reason.

"Yes," she said, "ready to go with you, away from here, anywhere, at
any time. You cannot stay here?"

There was something in her voice and face impossible to describe--a
deadly apathy, an icy coldness, a stony acceptance of a hopeless
situation.

For the first time in twenty-four hours the color returned to Dixon's
face. His eyes flashed, his teeth were set, as he sprang to his feet.
In that instant he set his face against the power that would fling him
into bottomless abysses of shame and ruin.

"I _will_ stay here!" he said, fiercely. "I will _not_ fly again! The
worst that could happen _has_ happened. Where should I go to escape
my fate? Why should I attempt it? No! I swear to live my life here,
and to live it as a man should live w