k seemed to implore
her pardon for the shifts he had been driven to; it appealed to her
to help him out, to stand by him in his unspeakable situation.

"I see," she said.

He smiled, in charming gratitude to her for seeing it.

That smile raised the devil in her. Why, after all, should she help
him out?

"And are you susceptible to music--in the same unpleasant way?"

"Me? Oh, no--no. I like it; it gives me the very greatest pleasure."
He stared at her in bewilderment and distress.

"Then why," said Mrs. Norman sweetly, "if it gives you pleasure,
should you cut yourself off from it?"

"My dear Mrs. Norman, we have to cut ourselves off from a great many
things--that give us pleasure. It can't be helped."

She meditated. "Would it be any good," she said, "if I were to call
on Mrs. Wilkinson?"

Wilkinson looked grave. "It is most kind of you, but--just at
present--I think it might be wiser not. She really, you know, isn't
very fit."

Mrs. Norman's silence neither accepted nor rejected the preposterous
pretext. Wilkinson went on, helping himself out as best he could:

"I can't talk about it; but I thought I ought to let you know. We've
just got to give everything up."

She held herself in. A terrible impulse was upon her to tell him
straight out that she did not see it; that it was too bad; that
there was no reason why she should be called upon to give everything
up.

"So, if we don't come," he said, "you'll understand? It's better--it
really is better not."

His voice moved her, and her heart cried to him, "Poor Peter!"

"Yes," she said; "I understand."

Of course she understood. Poor Peter! so it had come to that?

"Can't you stay for tea?" she said.

"No; I must be going back to her."

He rose. His hand found hers. Its slight pressure told her that he
gave and took the sadness of renunciation.

That winter Mrs. Wilkinson fell ill in good earnest, and Wilkinson
became the prey of a pitiful remorse that kept him a prisoner by his
wife's bedside.

He had always been a good man; it was now understood that he avoided
Mrs. Norman because he desired to remain what he had always been.

III

There was also an understanding, consecrated by the piety of their
renunciation, that Wilkinson was only waiting for his wife's death
to marry Mrs. Norman.

And Wilkinson's wife was a long time in dying. It was not to be
supposed that she would die quickly, as long as she could interfere
with his happiness