s short-lived, as ecstasy usually is. Richard Calmady
unclasped his hands and dropped back against the pillows, putting her
away from him with a certain authority.

"My beloved one, do not tempt me," he said, "we must remember the
child. The devil of jealousy is very great, even when one lies, as I do
now, more than half dead." He turned his head away, and his voice
shook. "Ten years hence, twenty years hence, you will be as
beautiful--more so, very likely--than ever. Other men will see you, and
I----"

"You will be just what you were and always have been to me," Katherine
interrupted. "I love you, and shall love."

She answered bravely, taking his hand again and caressing it, while he
looked round and smiled at her. But she grew curiously cold. She
shivered, and had a difficulty in controling her speech. Her new
companion, Sorrow, refused to be tricked and to leave her, and the
breath of sorrow is as sharp as a wind blowing over ice.

"You have made me perfectly content," Richard Calmady said presently.
"There is nothing I would have changed. No hour of day--or night--ah,
my God! my God!--which I could ask to have otherwise." He paused,
fighting a sob which rose in his throat. "Still you are quite
young----"

"So much the worse for me," Katherine said.

"Oh! I don't know about that," he put in quietly. "Anyhow, remember
that you are free, absolutely and unconditionally free. I hold a man a
cur who, in dying, tries to bind the woman he loves."

Katherine shivered. Despair had possession of her.

"Why reason about it?" she asked. "Don't you see that to be bound is
the only comfort I shall have left?"

"My poor darling," Richard Calmady almost groaned.

His own helplessness to help her cut him to the quick. Wealth, and an
inherent graciousness of disposition, had always made it so simple to
be of service and of comfort to those about him. It was so natural to
rule, to decide, to alleviate, to give little trouble to others and
take a good deal of trouble on their behalf, that his present and final
incapacity in any measure to shield even Katherine, the woman he
worshipped, amazed him. Not pain, not bodily disfigurement,--though he
recoiled, as every sane being must, from these,--not death itself,
tried his spirit so bitterly as his own uselessness. All the pleasant,
kindly activities of common intercourse were over. He was removed alike
from good deeds and from bad. He had ceased to have part or lot in the
aff