without understanding anything? From a child you had examples before
your eyes--you could see daily the beauty, the blessings of morality,

of principles. . . ."
His voice rose and fell pompously in a strange chant. His eyes were

still, his stare exalted and sullen; his face was set, was hard, was
woodenly exulting over the grim inspiration that secretly possessed

him, seethed within him, lifted him up into a stealthy frenzy of
belief. Now and then he would stretch out his right arm over her head,

as it were, and he spoke down at that sinner from a height, and with a
sense of avenging virtue, with a profound and pure joy as though he

could from his steep pinnacle see every weighty word strike and hurt
like a punishing stone.

"Rigid principles--adherence to what is right," he finished after a
pause.

"What is right?" she said, distinctly, without uncovering her face.
"Your mind is diseased!" he cried, upright and austere. "Such a

question is rot--utter rot. Look round you--there's your answer, if
you only care to see. Nothing that outrages the received beliefs can

be right. Your conscience tells you that. They are the received
beliefs because they are the best, the noblest, the only possible.

They survive. . . ."
He could not help noticing with pleasure the philosophic breadth of

his view, but he could not pause to enjoy it, for his inspiration, the
call of august truth, carried him on.

"You must respect the moral foundations of a society that has made you
what you are. Be true to it. That's duty--that's honour--that's

honesty."
He felt a great glow within him, as though he had swallowed something

hot. He made a step nearer. She sat up and looked at him with an
ardour of expectation that stimulated his sense of the supreme

importance of that moment. And as if forgetting himself he raised his
voice very much.

"'What's right?' you ask me. Think only. What would you have been if
you had gone off with that infernalvagabond? . . . What would you

have been? . . . You! My wife! . . ."
He caught sight of himself in the pier glass, drawn up to his full

height, and with a face so white that his eyes, at the distance,
resembled the black cavities in a skull. He saw himself as if about to

launch imprecations, with arms uplifted above her bowed head. He was
ashamed of that unseemly posture, and put his hands in his pockets

hurriedly. She murmured faintly, as if to herself--
"Ah! What am I now?"

"As it happens you are still Mrs. Alvan Hervey--uncommonly lucky for
you, let me tell you," he said in a conversational tone. He walked up

to the furthest corner of the room, and, turning back, saw her sitting
very upright, her hands clasped on her lap, and with a lost,

unswerving gaze of her eyes which stared unwinking like the eyes of
the blind, at the crude gas flame, blazing and still, between the jaws

of the bronze dragon.
He came up quite close to her, and straddling his legs a little, stood

looking down at her face for some time without taking his hands out of
his pockets. He seemed to be turning over in his mind a heap of words,

piecing his next speech out of an overpowering abundance of
thoughts.

"You've tried me to the utmost," he said at last; and as soon as he
said these words he lost his moral footing, and felt himself swept

away from his pinnacle by a flood of passionateresentment against the
bungling creature that had come so near to spoiling his life. "Yes;

I've been tried more than any man ought to be," he went on with
righteous bitterness. "It was unfair. What possessed you to? . . .

What possessed you? . . . Write such a . . . After five years of
perfect happiness! 'Pon my word, no one would believe. . . . Didn't

you feel you couldn't? Because you couldn't . . . it was
impossible--you know. Wasn't it? Think. Wasn't it?"

"It was impossible," she whispered, obediently.
This submissive assent given with such readiness did not soothe him,

did not elate him; it gave him, inexplicably, that sense of terror we
experience when in the midst of conditions we had learned to think

absolutely safe we discover all at once the presence of a near and
unsuspected danger. It was impossible, of course! He knew it. She knew

it. She confessed it. It was impossible! That man knew it, too--as
well as any one; couldn't help knowing it. And yet those two had been

engaged in a conspiracy against his peace--in a criminal enterprise
for which there could be no sanction of belief within themselves.

There could not be! There could not be! And yet how near to . . . With
a short thrill he saw himself an exiled forlorn figure in a realm of

ungovernable, of unrestrained folly. Nothing could be foreseen,
foretold--guarded against. And the sensation was intolerable, had

something of the withering horror that may be conceived as following
upon the utter extinction of all hope. In the flash of thought the

dishonouring episode seemed to disengage itself from everything
actual, from earthly conditions, and even from earthlysuffering; it

became purely a terrifying knowledge, an annihilating knowledge of a
blind and infernal force. Something desperate and vague, a flicker of

an insane desire to abase himself before the mysterious impulses of
evil, to ask for mercy in some way, passed through his mind; and then

came the idea, the persuasion, the certitude, that the evil must be
forgotten--must be resolutely ignored to make life possible; that the

knowledge must be kept out of mind, out of sight, like the knowledge
of certain death is kept out of the daily existence of men. He

stiffened himself inwardly for the effort, and next moment it appeared
very easy, amazinglyfeasible, if one only kept strictly to facts,

gave one's mind to their perplexities and not to their meaning.
Becoming conscious of a long silence, he cleared his throat warningly,

and said in a steady voice--
"I am glad you feel this . . . uncommonly glad . . . you felt this in

time. For, don't you see . . ." Unexpectedly he hesitated.
"Yes . . . I see," she murmured.

"Of course you would," he said, looking at the carpet and speaking
like one who thinks of something else. He lifted his head. "I cannot

believe--even after this--even after this--that you are
altogether--altogether . . . other than what I thought you. It seems

impossible--to me."
"And to me," she breathed out.

"Now--yes," he said, "but this morning? And to-morrow? . . . This is
what . . ."

He started at the drift of his words and broke off abruptly. Every
train of thought seemed to lead into the hopeless realm of

ungovernable folly, to recall the knowledge and the terror of forces
that must be ignored. He said rapidly--

"My position is very painful--difficult . . . I feel . . ."
He looked at her fixedly with a pained air, as though frightfully

oppressed by a sudden inability to express his pent-up ideas.
"I am ready to go," she said very low. "I have forfeited everything

. . . to learn . . . to learn . . ."
Her chin fell on her breast; her voice died out in a sigh. He made a

slight gesture of impatientassent.
"Yes! Yes! It's all very well . . . of course. Forfeited--ah!

Morally forfeited--only morally forfeited . . . if I am to believe
you . . ."

She startled him by jumping up.
"Oh! I believe, I believe," he said, hastily, and she sat down as

suddenly as she had got up. He went on gloomily--
"I've suffered--I suffer now. You can't understand how much. So much

that when you propose a parting I almost think. . . . But no. There is
duty. You've forgotten it; I never did. Before heaven, I never did.

But in a horridexposure like this the judgment of mankind goes
astray--at least for a time. You see, you and I--at least I feel

that--you and I are one before the world. It is as it should be. The
world is right--in the main--or else it couldn't be--couldn't be--what

it is. And we are part of it. We have our duty to--to our fellow
beings who don't want to . . . to. . . er."