"Don't be hurt, please don't be hurt, but just a little of that wouldn't surprise me. Oh, my dear, you don't think I should change to you just because of a little unhappiness? When you've given me all the happiness I've ever had!" "All you've ever had? Poor child!" "It wasn't quite loyal to let that slip out. And it was my own fault, of course, mostly. But they--they were sometimes rather hard on me." She smiled piteously. "For my good? Perhaps it was. Without it, you mightn't have cared for me." "Is it as much to you as that?" he asked, a note of fear, almost of distress, in his voice. She marked it, and answered gaily, "It wouldn't be worth having if it wasn't, Harry!" He kissed her fondly and tenderly, praying in his heart that he might not turn all her happiness to grief. Her presence had wrought on him at last in its old way; if it had not given him peace, yet it had shown him where the chance of peace lay, if he would take it. It had again made him hate the thing he had been doing, and himself for doing it; again it had made him almost hate the woman whom and whom only he had, in truth, that day come to see. It had made the right thing seem again within his reach, made the idea of giving up Vivien look both impossibly cruel to her and impossibly foolish for himself. Yet he was, like Isobel, in great fear--in almost hopeless fear. These two, with their imperious desire for one another, became, each to the other, a terror--in themselves terrors, and the source of every danger threatening from outside. "She gave me the chance of ending it last night. If only I could take her at her word!" "Not after to-night!" she had said. He remembered the words in a flash of hope. But he remembered also that his answer had been, "Ah, you do!" and a kiss. If she said again, "Not after to-night!"--aye, said it again and again--would not the answer always be, "Ah, but to-night at least!" Such words ever promised salvation, but brought none; they were worse than useless. Under a specious pledge of the future, they abandoned the present hour. Chapter XVI. A CHOICE OF EVILS.