the strain of it no longer.

The thoughts which that incident had given rise to in her mind, had
thrown their shadows upon all her lightness of heart for many days
afterwards. There she had seen the keen acid of implacable justice
separating, with undeviating precision, the dross from the gold. She
had beheld the naked fact of adultery--stripped of all the silk of
glamour, all the velvet of romance which once it had worn--held in
its cringing shame before the unsympathetic eyes of twelve men in
a public court of law. And he who had done it, he who had wrenched
away the silken garments, torn off the folds of velvet and flung the
naked deed before their eyes, was the man into whose keeping she had
given her whole existence.

"You, who admittedly can play with passion at the fringe of
adultery," she heard him crying out as she stole from the court, "do
you expect a jury of men, who know the world, to believe that a mere
scruple has withheld you from giving yourself to the importunate
desires of this man--the co-respondent?"

Was that what he thought of her--was that what he thought she had
done to her shame with him? Sally had cried out these questions to
herself, as he had cried them to the woman; but when that evening,
he asked her in a quiet voice what she had thought of the case, she
had evaded any expression that would disclose the trouble of her
mind.

"I couldn't stay till the end, you know," she said. "I had to go before
the verdict. What happened?"

"Oh, we won--hands down; but upon my soul I'm not sure that she did
actually commit adultery. There are some women--men too, for that
matter--who'll play with fire till their hearts are burnt out--but
conventionality drags 'em back from the one deed that will absolutely
crush their conscience, and they think themselves confoundedly
ill-treated when they get their retribution. They whine, like that
woman did to-day; but I'm inclined to believe that on the vital clause
she was telling the truth."

Sally had looked at him, wondering and in amazement; but she had said
nothing, mistrusting herself to speak.

The effect of this incident upon her mind had softened with time--in
time she had practically forgotten about it. And then came round the
end of the third year. The previous year he had given up journalism
entirely, his time being fully occupied with legal business at the
courts. He took chambers to himself in the Temple. Sometimes Sally
came down there on a