With John, this silence that was forced upon him was more cruel still. On a scaffold, set before the crowd, he stood, listening to the loathing and reproach that groaned in every throat. The little old lady was making this sacrifice, and yet, he knew a thousand times that he should not let it be. To stand there then and, in that derisive silence, to quietly give consent, was the utmost penalty that he could pay. Then, in the teeth of all reproach, as though to shut out from his ears the moaning of that cruel, relentless crowd, he caught her slender figure in his arms and strained her to him. "My little mother," he said wildly in his breath, "it can’t be like that--it can’t be! Something must be done. I’ll think it out, but something must be done." Then, kissing her again and again, he put her down from him, as you put back a little doll into its cradle--a little doll which some thoughtless hand has treated ill. They said no word to each other as they passed through the archway this time. In silence, they stepped into the gondola which had been waiting for them at the steps for an hour and more. John told him the hotel at which Jill was staying, and the gondolier pushed out into the black water. Another moment, and they were swaying into the soft velvet darkness, rent here and there with little points of orange light, where a lamp burnt warmly in some tiny window. "And to-morrow," said John presently, "you must go back? Perhaps that’s the hardest part of it." "I shall not go for a few days," Jill replied quietly. He looked quickly at her white face. Impulsively his hand stretched out to hers. She stared before her as he took it. She was like a figure of ivory, set strangely in black marble, as black as the water itself. There was no movement from her, no stir, scarcely a sign of life. "That’s good of you," he said in honest thankfulness. "You’re being wonderfully good to me." He repeated it, ruminating, with his eyes looking out into the distance where hers were set. "But, I might have known you’d be that." She shuddered. Praise from him, then, hurt more than all. She shuddered as if a wind had chilled her. After a long pause, he moved and spoke again. "How are you going to manage?" he asked. "What are you going to do?" "I shall write." "Home?" "No--to Mrs. Crossthwaite." "Is it safe?" "I think so." "But you mustn’t be discovered," he said quickly. Conscience pulled him first one way, then another. Every instinct prompted him to accept her generosity without question. "You must not take too great a risk. Why, indeed, should you take any?" The words came slowly. He felt both glad and sorry when once they were spoken. The tragedy of life is indecision. They bury suicides at the crossroads, for that is where lurks all tragedy--the indecision of which way to choose.