Dare continued talking volubly of how he would get a lawyer's opinion at once in London; of his certainty that the American wife had no claim upon him; of how he would go over to America, if necessary, to establish the validity of his divorce; but Mr. Alwynn heard little or nothing of what he said. He was thinking of Ruth with distress and self-upbraiding. He had been much to blame, of course. Dare's mention of her name recalled his attention. "She is all goodness," he was saying. "She believes in me. She has promised again that she will marry me--since yesterday. I trust her as myself; but it is a grief which as little as possible must trouble her. You will not say anything to her till I come back, till I return with proof that I am free, as I told her? You will say nothing?" Dare had pulled up at the bottom of the drive to the rectory. "Very well," said Mr. Alwynn, absently, getting slowly out. He seemed much shaken. "I will be back perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow morning," called Dare after him. But Mr. Alwynn did not answer. * * * * * Dare's business took him a shorter time than he expected, and the same night found him hurrying back by the last train to Slumberleigh. It was a wild night. He had watched the evening close in lurid and stormy across the chimneyed wastes of the black country, until the darkness covered all the land, and wiped out even the last memory of the dead day from the western sky. Who, travelling alone at night, has not watched the glimmer of light through cottage windows as he hurries past; has not followed with keenest interest for one brief second the shadow of one who moves within, and imagination picturing a mysterious universal happiness gathered round these twinkling points of light, has not experienced a strange feeling of homelessness and loneliness? Dare sat very still in the solitude of the empty railway carriage, and watched the little fleeting, mocking lights with a heavy heart. They meant _homes_, and he should never have a home now. Once he saw a door open in a squalid line of low houses, and the figure of a man with a child in his arms stand outlined in the door-way against the ruddy light within. Dare felt an unreasoning interest in that man. He found himself thinking of him as the train hurried on, wondering whether his wife was there waiting for him, and whether he had other children besides the one he was carrying. And all the time, through his idle musings, he could hear one sentence ringing in his ears, the last that his lawyer had said to him after the long consultation of the afternoon. "I am sorry to tell you that you are incontestably a married man."