pity, a touch, a regard--and he
dared not approach her!

She dared not look at him. After that first glance, in which there had
been so much of horror, of revulsion, she did not once look towards him.
Her face had the immutability of a mask of stone; so many wretched days
and haunted nights had she spent nerving herself for this inevitable
moment that no emotion was visible in her; into her agony she had poured
her pride, and it sustained her, as the plaster poured into the dry
bones at Pompeii makes the skeleton stand erect, the ashes speak.

"After that which you have told me," she said, after a moment's silence
in which he fancied she must hear the throbbing of his heart, "you must
know that my life cannot be lived out beside yours. The law gives you
many rights, no doubt, but I believe you will not be so base as to
enforce them."

"I have no rights!" he muttered. "I am a criminal before the law. The
law will free you from me, if you choose."

"I do not choose," she said coldly; "you understand me ill. I do not
carry my wrongs or my woes to others. What you have told me is known
only to Prince Vasarhely and to the Countess Brancka. He will be silent;
he has the power to make her so. The world need know nothing. Can you
think that I shall be its informant?"

"If you divorce me"---- he murmured.

A quiver of bitter anger passed over her features, but she retained her
self-control.

"Divorce? What could divorce do for me? Could it destroy the past?
Neither Church or Law can undo what you have done. Divorce would make me
feel that in the past I had been your mistress, not your wife, that is
all."

She breathed heavily, and again pressed her hand on her breast.

"Divorce!" she repeated. "Neither priest nor judge can efface a past as
you clean a slate with a sponge! No power, human or divine, can free
_me_, purify _me_, wash your dishonoured blood from your children's
veins."

She almost lost her self-control; her lips trembled, her eyes were full
of flame, her brow was black with passion. With a violent effort she
restrained herself; invective or reproach seemed to her low and coarse
and vile.

He was silent; his greatest fear, the torture of which had harassed him
sleeping and waking ever since he had placed his secret in her hands,
was banished at her words. She would seek no divorce--the children would
not be disgraced--the world of men would not learn his shame; and yet as
he heard a deeper despair tha