g. I do love him, then, but with a love no codes of yours can
understand. For I am innocent, to use the word by which you forgivingly
call the unjustly accused."

Hastings quailed beneath the bitterness of her irony; he saw, too, how
the man who so resembled him fell back against an old calico bag,
stuffed with remnants probably, that hung on a hook right behind where
he had been standing; but when he faced her once more, he marveled at
the change in her appearance.

Her brows were raised, contracted gently, resolutely; her eyes were
yearningly fixed on Hastings; her lips were parted tenderly for the
generous appeal she had at last found the need to make to him.

"Forgive me, O my husband!" she begged. "Nothing can come between
us, nothing shall. But I could not love you as I do if I loved not
others--if, for the chance love that came my way, I should give in
exchange no thanks. You understand me? You would not have me avoid
what I was made to love? You would not have me disregard the sunlight
and the sea and the stars in the sky? Yes, it is true, my husband, I
loved him. He said that my fingers on the spinet made into harmony all
the discords of the day; he said that I wove them away, with the notes
of birds and the sound of running brooks and the sighing of the wind,
into patterns, as in the long winter evenings I could spin flax at my
wheel. It made me happy to have him love me. It filled me with strength.
It taught me many new things I could do for you. John, John, say that
you forgive me?"

Though Hastings wanted to take her in his arms, he was impelled to turn
away from her and to view that silent figure still leaning against
the calico bag, whose head was lifted haughtily in deference to her
supplication.

"He loved you, too," she continued to Hastings, "because you loved
me. He did not mean to kiss me." She just raised her hands, as if
involuntarily, and let them fall at her sides. "You thought that he
was stealing me from you. He couldn't; he can't; and nobody can--now,
nor ever. His kiss was as pure as the perfume of lilies, pressed close
to breathe; it but made sweeter your love and mine, your life and mine."

"Adulteress! With my curses go to him, then, forever!"

The cry brought Hastings round to that other whose presence he had
forgotten. But next moment she was down before him; Hastings felt her
arms tight clasped about his knees.

"My husband, listen to me!" she implored. "I--we--there is somebo