"You will spare me as much as you can?" There was something very pitiful in the childlike entreaty; at least so it seemed to Gordon. She was so young for all this misery. Her very humility pained him, all the more because it was so strange to him. "I will spare you altogether, child," he replied. "You need not be afraid of me. I have loved you too well to hurt you now." For a moment or two he paced about the room restlessly, trying to discover some means by which he could break the marriage off and take the blame upon himself. But no likely plan occurred to him. His brain refused to act. Disconnected scraps of ideas and ludicrous reminiscences, all foreign to the matter, forced themselves upon his mind, the harder he strove to think. He gave the effort up. He would be able to concentrate his attention better when he was alone. Besides, he recollected he had not heard the whole story as yet. Some clue to an issue might perhaps be found in the untold remainder. "Tell me the rest!" he said, returning to his chair. "The rest?" she inquired. Gordon's generosity had pierced straight to her heart at last, and had sent the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Yes! The rest of the story down to tonight." "Oh! I can't," she cried. "Not now! I can't! If you had been rough and harsh, yes! But you have been so gentle with me. "It will be the kindest way for me," Gordon replied. "I must know the truth some way or another, and I would rather have you tell it me than ferret it out for myself." "Very well, then," she said, wearily; and for a space there was silence in the room. CHAPTER V "My mother died," she began, "eight months after our engagement, and then I went out to Poonah on a visit to my uncle. It is just a year and a half since I started." "Yea! I remember. I did not want you to go." "And I insisted. You know why now." "Yes! I know why now." Gordon repeated her words with a shiver. If only he had understood her a little better, he thought. Kate hardly noticed his interruption. She was staring straight into the fire and speaking in a dull monotone, with no spring in her voice. She would have spared him now, had she been able, but she felt irresistibly impelled to lay all her disloyalty bare before his eyes--to show him at how empty a shrine he had been worshipping. It seemed to her almost as if some stronger will was prompting her, and the very sound of her words was thin and strange to her ears, as though some one else was speaking them at a great distance. "Yes," she continued, "I wanted to get away from you--to slip out of my shackles for a time. So I went to Poonah, and--and there I found Austen."