She looked at the man sitting so wearily opposite her. So he believed he had never loved her? Well, she still believed that she had loved him. It was galling that he should have told her that. He ought to have known better than to say such a thing. So she had been a kind of Cleopatra to him? Well, he was not a Mark Antony to be held by love; but he hadn't loved, he said. She also was becoming confused. She put her cold fingers up to her temples and pressed them there for an instant. "Never shall amorous Antony Kiss kingdoms out for you." Where had she read those lines? But it was no matter where she had read them. "Your interview with Carolyn seems to have had a disastrous effect," she said. "What did she say to you?" "She said she forgave me." "Indeed!" "Yes; I asked her, you know." "You asked her?" she said, with an elevation of the eyebrows. Lawrence nodded. In a moment his wife said, "Now I should really hate to have a man ask me to forgive him for not marrying me. I should hate that. I should want somebody to come and thrash that man for me." Lawrence raised his head and met his companion's sparkling glance of resentment. "Of all the stupid things you ever did, Rodney Lawrence, that was the most stupid." "But I didn't ask her precisely that," he said. "I told her she was lucky not to have me for a husband; but I did beg for forgiveness for the way in which I left her." "Oh!" Prudence's way of uttering this interjection was as if she had struck a stinging blow across her companion's face. He winced inwardly, but still he met the stroke bravely. He had told her this in accordance with a resolve he had made long ago that he, on his part, would have no concealments from his wife. Perhaps the discovery that she sometimes prevaricated, sometimes colored simple statements, sometimes told downright falsehoods, had strengthened this resolve in him. On his side he would have simple, straightforward truth. But what was he, that he should rebuke her? Had he not broken the most sacred word a man can give,--broken it in the most insulting way possible? This thought came to him when he was tempted to rebuke. Then he would tell himself, with a corroding bitterness of feeling, that as a man sows so he must reap. He was reaping now. "I suppose you think you love Carolyn." Prudence said this after a silence. [Illustration: "LAWRENCE SPRANG TO HIS FEET."] CHAPTER XVI. TÊTE-À-TÊTE. Lawrence allowed himself an uneasy movement in his chair, and he did not answer. Prudence sat stroking the head and neck of the crow, which still remained on her knee. "Since we are having such a very interesting conversation," she said, "pray let's continue it. There's nothing so spicy and agreeable as a _tête-à-tête_ between husband and wife who are thoroughly disillusioned; don't you think so?"