'Oh, do not say that,' she cried, looking into his face imploringly. 'I know that in all the years to come there will be moments of anguished recollection. Twilight or the rose of dawn, a strain of music, a chance picture, the glow of sunset, a bud opening in spring, the song of a bird, any sight or sound that searches the depths of our nature—we know not why—all the things that touch us most may be charged with a burden of sadness—a sense of loss, a pain whose edge can never be entirely blunted. But the pain, and the loss, and the unconquerable yearning, let us take them by the hand, and make them the companions of our wiser hours. In seeking after the best that we can reach, each cup of suffering, every pang of sorrow, may breathe into our lives that finer spirit of all knowledge.'

'Ah, Stella, Stella! must I lose you? hear your voice no more? What can comfort me for this?' he said, looking at her with dimmed eyes. He turned away abruptly, and paced up and down the room. Then he came back to where she stood and resumed in a calmer voice: 'And to make the loss more intolerable there is the fact that our happiness was wrecked by the miserable intrigue of that wretched woman.... There are creatures so low down in the scale of nature that the whole nervous system consists of a slender cord, that has a little bulge by way of a brain near the mouth. That is about the type, morally, of a being who could act as she did. And yet she is to go unpunished—screened even from any sense of shame! But no; I shall yet in some way expose her!' said Langdale, with flashing eyes. It was not only the irreparable mischief to both their lives that made Mrs. Tareling's immunity from all penalty so intolerable to him, but also the recoil against injustice which, as a rule, moves a man more keenly than a woman. 'Let us admit,' he said in a lower tone, 'that we have been betrayed—but as for consolation——'

'Yes; betrayed by me!' answered Stella in a low voice. Langdale made a gesture of denial; but Stella put her hand on his arm, and, standing close beside him, repeated: 'Yes; it is true. In the end no one can betray us but ourselves. If, instead of being governed by wounded pride and fierce jealousy, I had resigned myself——'

'That is, if you had been some other human being instead of yourself. Stella, this is unreasonable!'

'And then,' she went on, speaking with some difficulty, 'it would be wrong for me not to tell you that in the first bitterness of our meeting I now feel I spoke in a way that reflected unduly on my husband.'

It was the first time she had spoken the word in his hearing, and as he heard it, Langdale coloured deeply.

'You will, I think, believe,' he returned, after a pause, 'that I could not try to urge you to any line of action merely in my own interests. I have been content to drift in this. I have formed plans and given them up. The chief thing was that you should first recover. You had in a measure done so when this ardour for nullifying your life seized you. But beware of doing your own inner nature and instincts a great violence.... You were imposed upon and feloniously betrayed. Granted that you should not under any circumstances have been cheated into such a marriage, still, there are certain forms of temptation to which every nature will succumb under given circumstances. But is it right to attempt fidelity to a bond that may eventually wreck your life? Anyone may be hurried into wrong-doing—betrayed into an unmoral course of life—but the fatal thing is the not repenting, or foisting ecclesiastical perversions upon the conscience. Morals have been evolved to save, not to crush us—not to make it impossible for us to work out the salvation of our better natures. Of course, I do not use the word in its priestly sense.'

'You are afraid for me,' she answered in a faltering voice; 'but believe me, weak and unstable as I have before been, I know now that I am no longer blinded. I am not afraid of you, Anselm. I am afraid of myself. If I went now with your sister.... Ah, you have understood what it meant.... We both know the tyrannical limitations of life. And then, do what we would—nothing could give us back the past—nothing.'

Her voice failed her, and there was silence for a little time.

'I must abide by your decision,' he said in a low voice.