anted to hurt you, Everard. I am sure
that I always loved you."

His arm went very softly around her. She responded to his embrace
without hesitation. Her cheek rested upon his shoulder, he felt the
warmth of her arm through her white, fur-lined dressing-gown.

"Why do you doubt any longer then," he asked hoarsely, "that I am your
husband?"

She sighed.

"Ah, but I know you are not," she answered. "Is it wrong of me to feel
what I do for you, I wonder? You are so like yet so unlike him. He is
dead. He died in Africa. Isn't it strange that I should know it? But I
do!"

"But who am I then?" he whispered.

She looked at him pitifully.

"I do not know," she confessed, "but you are kind to me, and when I feel
you are near I am happy. It is because I wanted to see you that I would
not stay any longer at the nursing home. That must mean that I am very
fond of you."

"You are not afraid," he asked, "to be here alone with me?"

She put her other arm around his neck and drew his face down.

"I am not afraid," she assured him. "I am happy. But, dear, what is the
matter? A moment ago you were cold. Now your head is wet, your hands are
burning. Are you not happy because I am here?"

Her lips were seeking his. His own touched them for a moment. Then he
kissed her on both cheeks. She made a little grimace.

"I am afraid," she said, "that you are not really fond of me."

"Can't you believe," he asked hoarsely, "that I am really Everard--your
husband? Look at me. Can't you feel that you have loved me before?"

She shook her head a little sadly.

"No, you are not Everard," she sighed; "but," she added, her eyes
lighting up, "you bring me love and happiness and life, and--"

A few seconds before, Dominey felt from his soul that he would have
welcomed an earthquake, a thunderbolt, the crumbling of the floor
beneath his feet to have been spared the torture of her sweet
importunities. Yet nothing so horrible as this interruption which really
came could ever have presented itself before his mind. Half in his arms,
with her head thrown back, listening--he, too, horrified, convulsed for
a moment even with real physical fear--they heard the silence of the
night broken by that one awful cry, the cry of a man's soul in torment,
imprisoned in the jaws of a beast. They listened to it together until
its echoes died away. Then what was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing
of all, she nodded her head slowly, unperturbed, unterrified