"Whatever made you behave so?" he asked in a low voice. "I wasn't unkind to you, was I? You had a nice, comfortable home, hadn't you?" "I was mad," she answered, with a touch of sharp weariness. "I don't suppose I could ever make you understand; and yet,"--she looked at him deprecatingly,--"I suppose, James, that you too were young once, and--and--mad?" Mr. Tapster stared at Flossy. What extraordinary things she said! Of course he had been young once; for the matter of that, he didn't feel old--not to say _old_--even now. But he had always been perfectly sane--she knew that well enough! As for her calling herself mad, that was a mere figure of speech. Of course, in a sense, she had been mad to do what she had done, and he was glad that she now understood this; but her saying so simply begged the whole question, and left him no wiser than he was before. There was a long, tense silence between them. Then Mr. Tapster slowly rose from his arm-chair and faced his wife. "I see," he said, "that William was right. I mean, I suppose I may take it that that young fellow has gone and left you?" "Yes," she said, with a curious indifference, "he has gone and left me. His father made him take a job out in Brazil just after the case was through." "And what have you been doing since then?" asked Mr. Tapster suspiciously. "How have you been living?" "His father gives me a pound a week." Flossy still spoke with that curious indifference. "I tried to get something to do"--she hesitated, then offered the lame explanation--"just to have something to do, for I've been awfully lonely and miserable, James; but I don't seem to be able to get anything." "If you had written to Mr. Greenfield or to William, they would have told you that I had arranged for you to have an allowance," he said, and then again he fell into silence.... Mr. Tapster was seeing a vision of himself, magnanimous, forgiving--taking the peccant Flossy back to his heart and becoming once more, in a material sense, comfortable! If he acceded to her wish, if he made up his mind to forgive her, he would have to begin life all over again, move away from Cumberland Crescent to some distant place where the story was not known--perhaps to Clapham, where he had spent his boyhood. But how about Maud? How about William? How about the very considerable expense to which he had been put in connection with the divorce proceedings? Was all that money to be wasted? Mr. Tapster suddenly saw the whole of his little world rising up in judgment, smiling pityingly at his folly and weakness. During the whole of a long and of what had been, till this last year, a very prosperous life, Mr. Tapster had always steered his safe course by what may be called the compass of public opinion, and now, when navigating an unknown sea, he could not afford to throw that compass overboard, so---- "No," he said; "no, Flossy. It would not be right for me to take you back. _It wouldn't do._"