ill. Ferris, whom I met to-day in town, said that the doctor would not

let you get up. There is some discrepancy here."

Her eyes filled with tears. "I know," she said. "May I tell you about it?"

"Certainly."

He had seated her in the old wooden writing-chair from which he had risen. He fetched another for himself, and placed it near. The lamp fell upon her burnished hair and upon his strained face as he raised it to her. It struck her that he was very different from her memory of him. His eyes had surely grown larger, his face thinner. His close-cut hair changed his appearance. He wore other, nicer clothes than those in which she was accustomed to see him; but chiefly he looked younger, less assured. There was something almost wistful in his expression.

She gave a swift, appraising glance, and lowered her eyes to the table. In her nervousness she would have liked to take up a paper knife and play with it. Some deep instinct told her to be simple and perfectly straightforward. She let her hands lie in her lap.

"Mamma," she began, "did not want me to come back. I--I suppose she told you of the vexatious motor accident, which obliged Mr. Rosenberg and me to stop the night in a horrid little wayside inn?"

"She said something of it--yes."

"Of course I was most anxious not to have to be away all night, because I was to leave Worthing next day to come back here, and so, when the car did not return, I was urgent in begging that we might try to reach home some other way. So we drove in a little open cart, through pouring rain, to try and catch a train--the last train--and just missed it. I got very wet, and I could not dry my things properly, the place was so dirty and comfortless; and I got a little feverish chill. It was not much, but it made me delirious for some hours. I think the fever was partly because I was vexed and anxious. You see, I had written to you to say I was coming, and it was annoying to be stopped like that. Anyway, when I was sensible again mamma said I--I had been saying things ... you understand ... things about you ... when I didn't know what I was talking about."

"I see." His tone was dry.

"I had been very careful," she urged humbly, "not to say anything about what had passed between us. I hope you will forgive me for letting things out, unintentionally?"

"Let me hear all that happened before we talk about that."

She looked frightened, but after a short pause continued indomitably.

"Mamma seemed horrified. She begged me not to come back to you. In order to delay my coming, she told the doctor to keep me in bed, though I was practically well. I did not know what to do. I pretended to give in. Then she went to town--this morning--for a day's shopping or something, and Grover and I ran away without telling anybody. I hope you think I did right. You see, I knew I ought to come; I would not have deceived mamma, but my first duty is to you, and Grover told me that she had done something she really had no right to do. She had intercepted a letter from me to you. Ah, I know, it was partly my fault. I don't know what I may have said when I was wandering. She thought she was acting for the best, no doubt. But I felt unsafe somehow."

"I suppose you mean," said Gaunt slowly, "that your mother thought you had better not come back to me at all?"

"I think so--yes. She said the law would give me relief----"

"She was very probably right. And yet--you came? ... It did not strike you that that was a foolish thing to do? You did not reflect that possession is nine points of the law?"

He was looking fully at her, voice and eyes alike charged with meaning which could not be mistaken. She did not flinch. Her brown eyes told him that she had reflected, that in returning she was fully conscious of the finality of her action.

"I had not to consider that," was her instant reply. "I had to do what I knew to be right. I had to keep my word."

She spoke most evidently without any desire to create an effect. The listening man restrained himself with difficulty, but held on for a moment, to elucidate one more point.

"You came back, perhaps, in order to lay the case before me? To see if I would set you free?"

"Certainly not," was the steady answer. "You and I made an agreement. You have kept your half--you have done all you promised; but I"--the colour rushed over her face--"I have not done any of my share."

Not at all theatrically, but as naturally as an old Italian peasant will kiss the Madonna's feet, he slipped from his chair to his knees. So quietly that it did not startle Virginia at all, he took up one of the hands that lay in her lap and raised it to his lips. The action, so unlike him, the silence in which he performed it, amazed her so that she neither moved nor spoke. He replaced her hand, laying it tenderly down, and seemed as though he would speak, from his lowly position at her feet. Then, with his own brusque suddenness, he rose, and stood beside her, almost over her.

"God has used me better than I deserved," he muttered gruffly. "He has let me prove--prove to the hilt--that there is such a thing as a perfectly noble woman. Virginia, there shall be a way out for you. If you think my word of any value, I give it solemnly. I will make things right somehow. I may not be able to do it at once; I must think the matter over carefully. In the meantime, I want you to understand my position." He paused a moment, and then spoke more fluently, as if the thing he expressed had long been in his mind and so came easily from his lips. "When I first met you I had been, to all intents and purposes, a madman for twenty years. I had not been twenty-four hours your husband before I came to myself. It was as though--only I can't express it--as though your innocence were a looking-glass, in which I saw the kind of thing I am. Ever since, I have been your humble servant. I--I tried to let you see this, but of course it was hopeless. You were ill, and they told me to keep out of your way. Then, when you left me ... your heart was full of your little sister, occupied with your own grief. I couldn't force on you the consideration of mine."

He paused, and she knew it was to summon command of his voice.

"And the idea came to me that I would wait--that I would find out, for a certainty, that you really were as fine as I had grown to think you. I wanted to prove that you were heroic enough to come back to--to the sort of thing which, as you believed, awaited you here. So I wouldn't write to you as I longed to ... I just kept silence ... and you came. You are here ... I am such a fool at saying what I mean, but I must make you understand that, for so long as it may be necessary for you to remain, you are sacred. I--I will ask you to let me eat with you, and be with you sometimes, because of--er--the household. But once for all, I want you to feel quite sure that you have nothing to fear from me."

Thus, for the second time in her knowledge of him, the man broke through his taciturnity. She could not know that this outburst was far more characteristic of the real Osbert Gaunt than the sullen, frozen surface hitherto presented.

She had no words in which to answer it. The world had turned upside down, she could not reason, could not think out what this might ultimately mean for her. She could not grasp the fact of her husband's complete change of front. Seated in the old chair, worn shiny with many years of usage, she laid her hands upon its arms and lifted her eyes to his, first in wonder, then in a gladness which shone out in a smile that transfigured her pale face. He was quite near--almost stooping over her, and he held his breath with the intensity of the thrill that ran through him.

"O-o-oh!" she cooed tremulously. "Oh, Osbert!"

The sound of his name so moved him that he almost lost control. It sounded like a caress, it was as if she had kissed him. He told himself that he would count up the times she said it, from now until his final exit--treasure them in his mind and call them kisses.

At this moment the gong for dinner boomed in the hall. It brought both of them back with a start to the present moment. Virgie put her hands to her eyes as if she had been dreaming. The man was first of all uncomfortably conscious of riding breeches and gaiters.

"Good heavens, dinner, and I haven't dressed! I can't sit down with you like this!"

"Oh, yes, please do," she said, rising from her seat with a new gaiety, as though a weight had rolled away.

"Please don't keep me waiting while you dress, I am so hungry, and I want to show you my fine new appetite! Besides, Grover is sure to drive me upstairs at an unearthly hour, she has been clucking after me all day like an old mother hen, because, you see, I actually got out of bed to travel! So don't waste any more time, but just come in as you are."

"I'll wash my hands--shan't be five minutes," he stammered out, the sudden, everyday intimacy breaking upon him like a fiery, hitherto untasted source of bliss. "Wait for me, won't you?"