He stood in the centre of the room, his head raised, listening. No sound. Surely she was asleep. In spite of all the violence she had shown in their after-talk, the memory of her speech to Mrs. Watton lingered in the young fellow's mind. It astonished him to realise, as he stood there, in this morning silence, straining to hear if his wife were moving overhead, how, _pari passu_ with the headlong progress of his act of homage to the one woman, certain sharp perceptions with regard to the other had been rising in his mind. His life had been singularly lacking till now in any conscious moral strain. That a man's desires should outrun his conscience had always seemed to him, on the whole, the normal human state. But all sorts of new standards and ideals had begun to torment him since the beginning of his friendship with Marcella Maxwell, and a hundred questions that had never yet troubled him were even now pressing through his mind as to his relations to his wife, and the inexorableness of his debt towards her. Moreover, he had hardly left the House of Commons and its uproar--his veins were still throbbing with the excitement of the division--when a voice said to him, "This is the end! You have had your 'moment'--now leave the stage before any mean anti-climax comes to spoil it all. Go. Break your life across. Don't wait to be dismissed and shaken off--take her gratitude with you, and go!" Ah! but not yet--not yet! He sat down before his wife's little writing-table, and buried his face in his hands, while his heart burnt with longing. One day--then he would accept his fate, and try and mend both his own life and Letty's. Would it be generous to drop out of her ken at once, leave the gift in her lap, and say nothing? Ah! but he was not capable of it. His act must have its price. Just one half hour with her--face to face. Then, shut the door--and, good-bye! What was there to fear? He could control himself. But after all these weeks, after their conversation of the night before, to go away without a word would be discourteous--unkind even--almost a confession to her of the whys and wherefores of what he had done. He had a book of hers which he had promised to return. It was a precious little manuscript book, containing records written out by herself of lives she had known among the poor. She prized it much, and had begged him to keep it safe and return it. He took it out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it carefully back. In a few hours the little book should pass him into her presence. The impulse that possessed him barred for the moment all remorse, all regret. Then he looked for paper and pen and began to write. He sat for some time, absorbed in his task, doing his very best with it. It was a letter to his constituents, and it seemed to him he must have been thinking of it in his sleep, so easily did the sentences run.