"Because you once owed her a debt—she was very good to you after——"
"My God!—yes!"
"This will kill her. She will hear—there are so many who will be ready to give her chapter and verse of the scandal against her husband. But if this—nurse—were with you, it would, perhaps, all blow over."
"Is it really your wish that I should do this thing? Remember, she is hateful to me—and she can never, in any sense, be my wife again!"
"I am—glad!" she could not help exclaiming. "Then the sacrifice will not be so terrible, after all!"
"Perhaps not," he answered, his eyes full on hers with a passion of longing. "Will you let me think it over?"
"Decide quickly!" she begged him.
"There is nothing I would not do for you," he repeated.
Honor rose with her gracious smile of gratitude and trust, and they parted without touching hands. When she returned home, the reaction from the strain of their meeting prostrated her for hours. Her parents feared that the climate of Muktiarbad was, at last, telling on her healthy constitution as it had told on Ray Meredith's.
"Perhaps we shall have to send you home!" her mother sighed anxiously.