Prudence gazed at her husband a moment without speaking. Her eyes changed. She rose and went to him; she stood by his side, put an arm lightly about his neck, and bent down slightly towards him. He sat perfectly quiet. "I'm sorry you allowed yourself to get so tired," she said. "Oh, I shall get over that," he replied, carelessly. "Yes, but it hurts you." He smiled in silence. She moved slightly nearer. There was the old indefinite something in her manner which had once charmed him so. "Don't reproach yourself," she said, pleadingly; "you know you didn't love her then." No answer. Prudence bent nearer and kissed her husband's lips. But they did not respond. "You loved me," she murmured, kissing him again. In the silence that followed, during which Lawrence sat like a stone, Prudence gradually drew away from him. She stood looking at him, and the softness left her face. "Perhaps you don't love me any more," she said, finally. Lawrence roused himself. Everything seemed black before him, but he was conscious of trying to be gentle and courteous. "Perhaps I never loved you," he answered. "Oh!" It was strange how the woman's countenance had darkened; it did not look grieved, but angry. At that instant, if her face had worn a different look, Lawrence's heart might have suddenly melted and some things have happened differently. But no, he told himself afterward, how could she change herself? What was to be would be. The old fatalistic saying recurred to him again and again. But what was he, that he should blame any one for anything? "Prudence," he said. He put out his thin, burning hand and took hers; but in a moment she withdrew it. She stood before him, her graceful, erect figure in a blaze of sunshine that poured in through the window behind her. Lawrence wondered that her touch could give him no thrill now; his blood ran coldly beneath her kiss. Was he beginning to know her? or was it that he had known her when she had so enthralled him? These questions went through his mind so persistently that he was confused. "I have been a puppet in your hands," he said. He added, with an inexplicable smile, "But then, there was Mark Antony." He leaned wearily back in his chair. Prudence went to her own chair and sat down in it. The crow hopped round to her knee; he sat there looking at her, first with one eye and then with the other. She thought it was curious that she should recall, just at this moment, that night she had spent in the Boston hotel after the _Vireo_ had been run down, the night before she had been married. She and the crow had been together then, and she had thought of killing him. It seemed to her that the bird had called her a liar--a liar. She tried to throw off this remembrance.