"Oh, you innocent, just soul!" the man cried. "Yes, she is cruel in very deed, since being a wife in name alone these years past she yet clings tenaciously to that empty title. She has not enough womanly pride to free the man who earnestly pleads to be released, whose chill indifference protects her from temptation. She is technically a loyal wife, but practically a foe--a sort of satiric keeper of the records of my life. 'A wrong to her love,' you said. You generous child, she does not know what love means, but she does know her legal rights; and to my agony will maintain them to the last, since the shibboleth of her life is: 'What will the world say?' Yes, she is very cruel!" Sybil shivered as she recalled the contemptuous slow smile, the unrelenting, inquisitorial, pale eyes, but answered: "I suppose I should be cruel, too, if I were a wronged wife." She stopped; the blood rushed in a scarlet tide over all her shamed, pained face. "A wife?"--she gave a gasp and put her hand to her throat as if to remove some stricture there. "I may never be a wife! Marriage is honorable! Dorothy may wed, but I--" And then an agonized cry rang through the house: "Dorothy! oh, Dorothy! Little sister! I have lost you! I shall not dare to look into your honest eyes, lest you should see the sin in mine! I may not kiss your lips or touch your cheek, nor ever again pillow your dear head upon my arm the long night through because of the pollution on my life that makes me base, unworthy, and unfit associate for innocence like yours!" "Be silent!" savagely interrupted Thrall, with death-white face. "I have fallen to a level with the creatures you pity in the street, little sister! I am defiled forever!" And she fell prone upon the couch in an agony of tears.