"If Judy's arms were round me, I should not feel so lonely," she murmured. "Oh, Jasper, how can you turn from me? How can you fail to understand that my heart at least is big enough to love both Judy and you?" The lamp burnt dimly and the fire went completely out. Hilda presently fell asleep in the darkness, and now a moonbeam shining into the drawing room and falling across her tired face made it look white and unearthly, almost like the face of a dead girl. It was in this attitude that Quentyns found her when he came back somewhere between one and two o'clock. His conscience was reproaching him, for Rivers, an old friend, had not failed to give him a little spice of his mind; but he was just in that irritable condition where repentance is almost impossible, and when self-abasement only leads a man into further wrong-doing. When he saw Hilda's tired face, he said to himself with a sort of laugh: "If I don't encourage this sort of thing, I shall doubtless be more and more of a tyrant in the eyes of my good wife and that precious fastidious child and Rivers. Well, well, I cannot see the beauty of voluntary martyrdom. If Hilda weren't quite such a goose, she would have gone to bed two hours ago, instead of falling asleep here to the utter disregard of her health and personal appearance." So Quentyns, looking cross and uninterested, shook his wife not too gently; spoke in a commonplace tone, out of which he purposely excluded every scrap of emotion, and asked her how much longer she wanted to sit up. Hilda stumbled to her feet without a word. She went upstairs and to bed, but although her husband quickly slept, she lay awake until the morning. She came down to breakfast, looking tired and fagged. There were black lines under her eyes, and when Quentyns asked her what was the matter, she not only owned to a headache, but burst into tears. When a man is thoroughly cross, nothing irritates him more than tears on the part of his wife, and Quentyns now so far forgot himself as to rise hastily from the breakfast table and leave the room, slamming the door behind him. He put in his head a moment later to nod to his wife and say good-by. "If I'm late, don't wait dinner for me," he said, and then he left the house. Hilda had plenty of time to wipe her tears away in the deserted breakfast room. The pain at her heart was almost greater than she could bear. Her gentle nature was stirred by what she considered gross injustice on the part of her husband. "He does not care for me any more," she muttered. "I thought him great and brave and good. I know he is clever; I suppose he is great, and perhaps even good; but I am too small and too little for him--I fail to understand him, and he does not love me any more. Oh, if only little Judy had stayed with me I should not feel as broken-hearted as I do at present. if only little Judy had stayed with me, I should loneliness of my life?"