atment of it. "Well, it
would have been difficult; we should have had to walk by turns. But it
would have been jolly to see the sunrise."

"Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly," he agreed.

"Was it? You saw it, then?"

"I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them."

"Naturally--I suppose you were worried. Why didn't you call on me to
share your vigil?"

He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. "I
don't think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT," he said with sudden
grimness.

Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as in
one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping her
sense of it out of her eyes.

"DENOUEMENT--isn't that too big a word for such a small incident? The
worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has probably slept
off by this time."

She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to her
in the glare of his miserable eyes.

"Don't--don't----!" he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and while
she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore any cause for
it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he dropped down on the bench
near which they had paused, and poured out the wretchedness of his soul.

It was a dreadful hour--an hour from which she emerged shrinking and
seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was
not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak; but
rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface
of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had
always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the
situation had presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid
image--that of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping
road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending,
and wondering what would give way first. Well--everything had given way
now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so long.
Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it
from the road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his
furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made her feel
the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his life. But for her,
what ear would have been open to his cries? And what hand but hers could
drag him up again to a footing of sanity and self-respe