Therefore, encouraged by this thought, I faced my wife as if nothing had happened since I left the kitchen to answer the summons of the door-bell. I was prepared to find her indignant, wrathful, in tears, but I did not expect to see her sitting in an attitude of apathetic despair, dry-eyed and speechless. "Good heavens, Marion!" I cried. "What's the matter?" It was some time before I could get her to answer; then it was a positive relief to see her lips move and hear her say faintly, "You've--done it--now." I had difficulty in finding out what I had done. A gleam of hope thrilled me when at last she revived enough to attack in the open. Then, and not till then, did I develop my strategic lines of defence. First, I pleaded justification; second, that my vivid imagination, like Paul's, had led me to believe for the time that I was Peter; third, that I had tried in vain to make the minister understand that I was not Peter; fourth, that my desire for sympathy and companionship had warped my judgment and caused me to innocently yield to temptation; fifth, that I could not see that I had done wrong; sixth, that the burden of poignant grief for my conduct was more than I could bear; seventh, that any attempt to rub it in would harden my heart and stifle the reproaches of my own conscience; eighth,--well, to the final argument upon which I based my futile hopes Marion replied that her own attitude, born of the humiliating discovery of the kind of man I really was, might well be considered part of the inevitable consequences of my misdeeds, and that if she had ever given me cause to believe that she thought differently she took it all back. It was then, with my guns spiked, that I surrendered unconditionally. I only pleaded that for Paul's sake--dear little Paul, who, in his plays, so innocently invented fictions that rivalled Munchausen's--we should gather up the little fragments of our shattered happiness and piece them together with calm resignation. I was about to suggest that we should seek consolation in a life of self-abnegation by trying to do good to others, but, seeing that Marion was obviously moved, I desisted. I am proud to say I know how far to go; I am prouder that I know when to stop and keep a good thing for another occasion. Marion was melted, and no regular farmer was ever more grateful to see the welcome rain after a scorching drought than I was to see her tears. She was melted, and yet, strange to say, I could not get her to assure me that I was forgiven, and I am so constituted that I cannot be content without warm assurances to that effect.