nently. My daughter had married; I took her
husband into my employ. It was of him I spoke the other day."

He hesitated and paused, his eyes fixed in hers. The phrases had come
from him haltingly, one by one, but each he had dowered with an accent
that carried conviction with it. With the note which he held in his
hand, he still toyed abstractedly.

"You understand now, do you not?" he asked. "You understand and
forgive?"

And Eden, as one who has weathered a storm and sees shipwreck imminent
in port bowed her head. "It is truth," she told herself. "If he reads
that note, he will kill me."

"You understand now, do you not?" he repeated. His voice was sonorous
and caressing as an anthem, and he bent nearer that he might see her
face.

"Too late!" she answered.

"No, Eden, not that. Look at me. You must not hide your eyes. In all the
world there are none as fair as they. Look at me, Eden. Tell me that you
forgive. I have pained you, I know; I have been stupid; but the pain has
been unwitting and the stupidity born of love. Look at me, Eden. See,"
he continued, and bent at her side, "See, I ask forgiveness on my
knees. Can you not give it me?"

"To you, yes, but never to myself." She spoke hoarsely, in a voice
unlike her own; her eyes were not in his, they were staring at something
in his hand, and as she stared, she seemed to shrink. The muscles of her
face were rigid. And Usselex, perplexed at the fixidity of her gaze,
followed the direction which her eyes had taken and saw that they rested
on the note which he still held, crumpled and forgotten. For a second he
looked at it wonderingly, "Why, it is from you," he exclaimed.

In that second, Eden, with the prescience that is said to visit those
that drown, went forward and back, into the past and into the future as
well. Amid her scattered yesterdays she groped for a promise. Of the
unanswering morrows she called for release, and as her husband stood up,
preparing to read what she had written, she felt herself the depository
of shame.

The next instant she was at his side. "Give it me," she murmured. Her
voice trembled a little, but she strove to render it assured. "Give it
me," she pleaded.

Usselex turned to her at once. "Certainly, if you wish it," he said.
"What is it about?"

He held the note to her, and she, with an affected air of indifference,
took it from him and tossed it into the grate.

"Nothing," she answered, and then, as though ashamed of th