as quite clear; he told himself that the thought
of again taking up the thread of what had been so unnatural an existence
was hateful--impossible.

Perhaps the woman felt the man's obscure moment of recoil; she gently
withdrew herself from his arms. "I'm tired," she said, rather
plaintively, "the train sways so, Laurence. I wonder if I could lie
down----"

He heaped up the cushions, spread out the large rug, which he had
purchased that day, and which formed their only luggage, for everything
else, by her wish, had been sent on the day before.

Very tenderly he wrapped the folds of the rug round her. Then he knelt
by her side; and at once she put out her arms, and pulled his head down
close to hers; a moment later her soft lips were laid against his cheek.
He remembered, with a retrospective pang, the ache at his heart with
which the sight of her caresses to her child had always filled him.

"Peggy," he whispered, "tell me, my beloved, why are you being so good
to me--now?"

She made no direct answer to the question. Instead, she moved away a
little, and raised herself on her elbow; her blue eyes, filled with a
strange solemnity, rested on his moved face.

"Listen," she said, "I want to tell you something, Laurence. I want you
to know that I understand how--how angelic you have been to me all these
years. Ever since we first knew one another, you have given me
everything--everything in exchange for nothing."

And as he shook his head, she continued, "Yes, for nothing! For a long
time I tried to persuade myself that this was not so--I tried to believe
that you were as contented as I had taught myself to be. I first
realised what a hindrance"--she hesitated for a moment, and then said
the two words--"our friendship--must have proved to you four years
ago,--when you might have gone to St. Petersburg."

As Vanderlyn allowed an exclamation of surprise to escape him, she went
on, "Yes, Laurence, you have never known that I knew of that chance--of
that offer. Adele de Lera heard of it, and told me; she begged me then,
oh! so earnestly, to give you up--to let you go."

"It was no business of hers," he muttered, "I never thought for a moment
of accepting----"

"--But you would have done so if you had never known me, if we had not
been friends?" She looked up at him, hoping, longing, for a quick word
of denial.

But Vanderlyn said no such word. Instead, he fell manlike into the trap
she had perhaps unwittingly laid f