"You’re not playing the game, Evelyn," he had said once, more gravely than occasion seemed to warrant, when she had just successfully evaded some trivial rule he had been at pains to teach her. "One must always play the game in life, however trivial it may seem." "_One must always play the game in life, however trivial it may seem_." Perhaps she said the words aloud; she never knew. He started. "My dear, my dear," she said, "I can’t!" She hid her head on his shoulder, not daring to face him. She heard him draw a deep breath, and stand tense and rigid. She drew back. "You don’t want heroics, nor do I. I am not afraid of the world or you. You’d be good to me for ever, and the best of our friends would be friends still, whatever happened. As for you, you’re too big a man for me to harm you here—your career, I mean. But that’s not all. There’s God and there’s eternity. They frighten me, not for myself, but you." "Eve——!" She put out her hand again. "Don’t—don’t dear, have some pity!" The anguish of her tone arrested him midway to her. He stopped short, a man who had received a mortal blow. "No—never again. It will all be harder for you because you’re a man and I’m a woman," she said, "but you’ve got to get on without me, and you will, you will! That’s the beginning and the end of it. Oh, there’s not a spark of all your generosity to me that I don’t love and worship. And it will all be dreadful in the future. But it’s just got to be.... And we must meet, too, ordinarily, in front of people and by ourselves, as if to-day had never come to us, as if we’d made a mark and crossed it from our lives. We shall do it, and get through—because we’ve got to, because we’re strong, because we love each other." She heard the beating of his heart, she felt its pulses against her hand as he drew her to him for a moment in spite of what she had said, in voiceless pleading while they clung together, and she wondered, with a little smile, if death would be more bitter. Silence again. He understood he could not move her. Then darkness, full and complete. She heard him go from her, heavily; the car throbbed. Presently there was a flash of light as it whirled past. It was well, perhaps, that he did not see her look of dumb agony as she stood alone, shaking from head to foot, straining her ears to hear the last echo of the car, making herself ready to face the long walk back and the long life ahead. *PART III* *THE BETRAYAL* "Iniquity shall bring all the earth to a desert, and wickedness ... o’verthrow the thrones of the mighty."—_Wisdom_ (Douay Version). *CHAPTER I* "As for them whose heart walketh after their scandals, I will lay their way upon their head, saith the Lord God."—ECCLESIASTICUS. "Black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them." ... "Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."—MRS. HODGSON BURNETT.