Muriel looked at him inquiringly. She did not appear in the least nervous now, for natures that tremble at a hindrance rise triumphantly to meet a calamity, and in a moment she realized that his presence was fully that. “Gladys couldn’t come at the last minute, and I did want to see you so, Muriel,” he explained. He pleaded as he had always done, and he was just as handsome. She let these things have full weight with her before she spoke. “Won’t you sit down, Captain Hurstly; they will bring tea in a minute. I am sorry your wife could not come.” Jack looked at her with eloquent, grieved eyes, but she meeting them saw the coward in his soul, and her face hardened. He had not cared enough for her to remain unmarried, merely enough to desire a flirtation after marriage. She had not slept properly for three nights after she received his letter. He was the first to find the silence uncomfortable. “I am not sorry she could not come,” he said with a tender inflection; “I wanted to see you alone. It is a long while since I have seen you, Muriel. To me it seems desperately long, and yet you have not changed at all.” “You are mistaken, Captain Hurstly; I have changed a great deal. You also have altered considerably.” Muriel’s tone was convincing even to herself; she was beginning to believe she could after all bear it. “It is true I have altered,” he replied. “You alone might know how terribly, but I suppose it is never wise to follow a wrong by a folly. Only one can’t help oneself when one’s world, all that one has ever cared for, tumbles about one’s ears. Oh, Muriel, how could you do it! how could you do it!” He was intensely in earnest; he could always be that at the very shortest notice. He stood in front of her looking down with the same passionate blue eyes which used to stir her heart, and yet when he met hers it did not seem as if he was looking down. “If you have come to open a question forever closed between us, Captain Hurstly, and which your own honor and good sense should know to be doubly closed by your marriage, I must ask you to excuse me. I did not invite your wife to tea as a permission for you to insult me.” “You are right,” he said looking at her with frank admiration; “you are always right, Muriel, without you I have forgotten how to be. Forgive me, I did not come here to upbraid you for ruining my life——” “I should think not, indeed,” Muriel interrupted scornfully. “But to ask you to help me about Gladys. Are you my friend enough to wish to do that—Muriel?” She flushed painfully. “I should like to help you,” she said in a low voice. “It’s simply that she won’t understand the danger of flirting with other men—every and any other man apparently,” he explained; “and I don’t want my wife to be a second Edith le Mentier.” There was a pause; his illustration was unfortunate. “You give her no cause to complain of you by your attention to the—first Mrs. le Mentier?” she could not forbear to ask.