cable,
which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with
him--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.

"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."

"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me at
once--everything--from the beginning!"

And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story of
the child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time making
much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of
minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson.
It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound
instead of widening it.

He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer;
one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred
memories.

But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.

"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you
write it for me some day--all you've told me?"

She made a sign of assent.

"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a
carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll
remember that you came."

She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She
saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she
had done was plain to her.

With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his
hand in hers.

"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't
understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore
you!"

He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not
unkindly.

"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be
husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of
English law, at this moment."

"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter
tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"

He shook his head.

"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet.
It--it's gone too deep."

He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She
stood helplessly weeping.

When he returned he was quite composed again.

"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't
make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill
in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used
to bei