was opened and closed, and Blake stood before her.

She rose frightened, but by a motion he reassured her. There was a quiet
dignity about the man that was strange to her.

"Why have you followed me?" she asked.

"I want you to return home."

"Home!" she cried. "You must be mad. Do you not know--"

He interrupted her vehemently. "I know nothing. I wish to know nothing.
Go back to London at once. I have made everything right; no one
suspects. I shall not be there; you will never see me again, and you
will have an opportunity of undoing your mistake--our mistake."

She listened. Hers was not a great nature, and the desire to obtain
happiness without paying the price was strong upon her. As for his good
name, what could that matter? he urged. People would only say that he
had gone back to the evil from which he had emerged, and few would be
surprised. His life would go on much as it had done, and she would only
be pitied.

She quite understood his plan; it seemed mean of her to accept his
proposal, and she argued feebly against it. But he overcame all her
objections. For his own sake, he told her, he would prefer the scandal
to be connected with his name rather than with that of his wife. As he
unfolded his scheme, she began to feel that in acquiescing she was
conferring a favour. It was not the first deception he had arranged for
the public, and he appeared to be half in love with his own cleverness.
She even found herself laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance
and that would say. Her spirits rose; the play that might have been a
painful drama seemed turning out an amusing farce.

The thing settled, he rose to go, and held out his hand. As she looked
up into his face, something about the line of his lips smote upon her.

"You will be well rid of me," she said. "I have brought you nothing but
trouble."

"Oh, trouble," he answered. "If that were all! A man can bear trouble."

"What else?" she asked.

His eyes travelled aimlessly about the room. "They taught me a lot of
things when I was a boy," he said, "my mother and others--they meant
well--which as I grew older I discovered to be lies; and so I came to
think that nothing good was true, and that everything and everybody was
evil. And then--"

His wandering eyes came round to her and he broke off abruptly. "Good-
bye," he said, and the next moment he was gone.

She sat wondering for a while what he had meant. Then Sennett