“From Lady Flanders, eh?” said he, recognizing the handwriting. “An invitation to dinner I suppose.” He read what was written, and silence fell upon him. Marion, though she would gladly have turned her eyes away from him, could not do so. She saw the change that came over his face, and it made her heart faint. He kept his eyes down, gazing at the paper, and it seemed to Marion as if he were never going to raise them. The suspense became more than she could bear, and it gave her the power to use her voice.
“Do you know why she did it, Philip?” was her question.
He looked up, at last, with a slow and heavy movement, as if his eyelids were weighted, and met his wife’s gaze gloomily.
“If I do know,” he said, “it was for something very worthless.”
“Have you ... anything to tell me?” asked Marion, just audibly.
“Perdita was honest and noble: she died pure. There is nothing to tell. A priest would absolve me; I can never absolve myself. Many a man who has sinned is worthier to be your husband than one who has avoided sin as I have.”
There followed a deep silence. Then Marion moved a step nearer to him, and said, “Do you love me, Philip?”
“I used to say ‘yes’ last summer,” he replied; “I thought I could do anything and be anything, then. Now it seems to me that I am nothing, and can do nothing. Whether I love you, or not, years must tell you, not words. Such men as I are the curse of the earth.”
“You are not a curse to me!” said Marion, putting her arms around him, and looking up in his face. “You are my husband, and I love you: and neither years nor words shall make me believe you do not love your wife!”
[THE END.]