ime she echoed it. "Afterward?"

"Did it never occur to you, when we met later--when you first went to
Mr. Langhope----"?

"To tell you then? No--because by that time I had come to see that I
could never be quite sure of making you understand. No one who was not
there at the time could know what it was to see her suffer."

"You thought it all over, then--decided definitely against telling me?"

"I did not have to think long. I felt I had done right--I still feel
so--and I was sure you would feel so, if you were in the same
circumstances."

There was another pause. Then Amherst said: "And last September--at
Hanaford?"

It was the word for which she had waited--the word of her inmost fears.
She felt the blood mount to her face.

"Did you see no difference--no special reason for telling me then?"

"Yes----" she faltered.

"Yet you said nothing."

"No."

Silence again. Her eyes strayed to the clock, and some dim association
of ideas told her that Cicely would soon be coming in.

"Why did you say nothing?"

He lowered his hand and turned toward her as he spoke; and she looked up
and faced him.

"Because I regarded the question as settled. I had decided it in my own
mind months before, and had never regretted my decision. I should have
thought it morbid...unnatural...to go over the whole subject again...to
let it affect a situation that had come about...so much later...so
unexpectedly."

"Did you never feel that, later, if I came to know--if others came to
know--it might be difficult----?"

"No; for I didn't care for the others--and I believed that, whatever
your own feelings were, you would know I had done what I thought right."

She spoke the words proudly, strongly, and for the first time the hard
lines of his face relaxed, and a slight tremor crossed it.

"If you believed this, why have you been letting that cur blackmail
you?"

"Because when he began I saw for the first time that what I had done
might be turned against me by--by those who disliked our marriage. And I
was afraid for my happiness. That was my weakness...it is what I am
suffering for now."

"_Suffering_!" he echoed ironically, as though she had presumed to apply
to herself a word of which he had the grim monopoly. He rose and took a
few aimless steps; then he halted before her.

"That day--last month--when you asked me for money...was it...?"

"Yes----" she said, her head sinking.

He laughed. "You couldn't tell me--but you co