"I didn't want to go to him; I tried not to. I did all I could to avoid going to him. It was you who insisted. You made me go. How could I help it? I hated it! And now----" She came a step towards him, and her voice changed to a very humble sad pleading: "It's very long ago, dear John, many years ago. It was all over many years ago." He did not speak. He motioned her away with his hand; her appeal did not seem to reach him at all. For all he did, he might not have heard it. With a long sigh she turned away, and walked unsteadily to the door. When she reached it, she turned again, and looked at him. He was putting the cheque back in the despatch-box with awkward trembling hands. She went slowly up to her room and sat down before the dying embers of the fire there. John would send back the cheque! He must send it back now; it would be a fearful thing to keep it, knowing what he did. And if he sent it back, all that happened then would be on her head! He mustn't send it back! She started up once in a panic, ready to rush down and implore him to keep it--implore him to commit the baseness of keeping it. No, she could not do that. If she were never to speak with him again, her last word ought to be to beseech him to send it back. But to send it back was ruin. Between the remorseless alternatives of calamity and degradation her mind oscillated in helpless indecision. Through long hours of the night John Fanshaw wrestled with himself; and when at last he crawled up to his dressing-room, flung off his coat and waistcoat, put on his slippers, and stretched himself exhausted on his bed, he declared that he could come and had come to no conclusion--that it was too hard for him. He was trying to deceive himself. There was a conclusion which he would not own, which had crept and insinuated itself into his mind, while he struggled against it and denied it to himself.