or
you of conceiving, imagining, comparing. It isn't a question now of
choosing." At last he came out with it. "You know something I don't.
You've shown me that before."

These last words had affected her, he made out in a moment, exceedingly,
and she spoke with firmness. "I've shown you, my dear, nothing."

He shook his head. "You can't hide it."

"Oh, oh!" May Bartram sounded over what she couldn't hide. It was almost
a smothered groan.

"You admitted it months ago, when I spoke of it to you as of something
you were afraid I should find out. Your answer was that I couldn't, that
I wouldn't, and I don't pretend I have. But you had something therefore
in mind, and I see now how it must have been, how it still is, the
possibility that, of all possibilities, has settled itself for you as the
worst. This," he went on, "is why I appeal to you. I'm only afraid of
ignorance to-day--I'm not afraid of knowledge." And then as for a while
she said nothing: "What makes me sure is that I see in your face and feel
here, in this air and amid these appearances, that you're out of it.
You've done. You've had your experience. You leave me to my fate."

Well, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a decision
to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal, though still, with a
small fine inner stiffness, an imperfect surrender. "It _would_ be the
worst," she finally let herself say. "I mean the thing I've never said."

It hushed him a moment. "More monstrous than all the monstrosities we've
named?"

"More monstrous. Isn't that what you sufficiently express," she asked,
"in calling it the worst?"

Marcher thought. "Assuredly--if you mean, as I do, something that
includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable."

"It would if it _should_ happen," said May Bartram. "What we're speaking
of, remember, is only my idea."

"It's your belief," Marcher returned. "That's enough for me. I feel
your beliefs are right. Therefore if, having this one, you give me no
more light on it, you abandon me."

"No, no!" she repeated. "I'm with you--don't you see?--still." And as
to make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair--a movement she
seldom risked in these days--and showed herself, all draped and all soft,
in her fairness and slimness. "I haven't forsaken you."

It was really, in its effort against weakness, a generous assurance, and
had the success of the impulse not, happily, be