"You were with me always, Craig, always," she said brokenly. "Is it too hard to believe? If you try to paint an ideal and the picture falls short, does that make your ideal less dear? What hope had I ever to meet you again? How could I dream that I stood for more in your thoughts than a heedless fugitive of whom you were well rid? You could not know that you had given me courage for the guardhouse and the prison; made me strive to become the girl you thought me; changed the whole trend of my foolish life! How then have I been unfaithful? Was it treachery to you, whom I never looked to see again, that when a good man--yes; at heart, Paul is a good man--offered me a way of escape I should take it? You ask me if I would have sold myself for a home, for that poor little flat in the Lorna Doone whose cheapness I never appreciated till to-night--I answer no. I know now that I did not love him; but I did not know it then. It was left for you to teach me." He made no response when she ceased. His hands lay nerveless under hers; his eyes still brooded on the fireless hearth. So for a hundred heart-beats they remained together. "You believe me, Craig?" "Yes," he wrenched forth at last. Jean slowly withdrew her hands. "But you cannot wholly forgive?" He had no answer. "I can say no more," she added, rising; and came again face to face with Julie, who made way for her at the door. "I leave your house to-morrow, Mrs. Van Ostade. If I could, I would go to-night." Free of gnawing secrecies at last! The thought brought a specious sense of peace. Julie's yoke broken! Her step on the stair grew buoyant. The battle desired by MacGregor had been fought. Precipitated by causes with which neither had reckoned, waged with a fierce heat alien to art, Craig's emancipation had nevertheless been at stake. The break had come, and it was beyond remedy. He must cleave to his wife. Too excited for sleep, she began at once her preparations for quitting Julie's hateful roof, and one after another overcame the obstacles which packing in the small hours entailed. Each overflowing chair, every yawning door and drawer, testified the increased complexity of her life and the bigness of her task. The bride of a single dinner-dress had become under Craig's lavish generosity the mistress of great possessions. There were gowns of many uses and many hues; hats and blouses in extravagant number; shoes--a little regiment of shoes aligned neatly in their trees; costly trifles for her desk; books and pictures in breath-taking profusion.