The latter had a surprising power to disturb him; lately he had even dreamed of her starving to death in the presence of abundant food. He began to be superstitious about it, to think of her in a ridiculous nervous manner as an evil design on his peace and security. She seemed unnatural with her shrunken face bowed opposite him at the table. His feeling for her shifted subconsciously to hatred. It broke out publicly in sardonic or angry periods under which she would shrink away, incredibly timid, from his scorn. This quality of utter helplessness gave the menace he divined in her its illusive air of unreality. She seemed--she was--entirely helpless; a prematurely aged woman, of the mildest instincts, dying of malnutrition. Miss Beggs now merged into all his daily life, his very fiber. He regarded her in an attitude of admirable frankness. “Still it is extraordinary you haven't married.” The tide was out, it was late afternoon, and they were walking over the hard exposed sand. Whenever she came on a shell she crushed it with a sharp heel. “There were some,” she replied indifferently. He nodded gravely. “It would have to be a special kind of man,” he agreed. “An ordinary individual would be crushed by your personality. You'd need a firm hand.” Her face was inscrutable. “I have always had the misfortune to be too late,” she told him. “I wish I had known you sooner!” he exclaimed. Her arms, in transparent sleeves, were like marble. His words crystallized an overwhelming realization of how exactly she was suited to him. The desire to shut her will in his hand increased a thousandfold. “Yes,” she said, “I would have married you. But there's no good discussing it.” She breathed deeply with a sinking forward of her rounded shoulders. All her vigor seemed to have left her. “I have been worried about Mrs. Turnbull lately,” she went on. “Perhaps it's my imagination--does she look weaker to you?” “I haven't noticed,” he answered brusquely. Curiously he had never thought of Emmy as dying; she appeared eternal, without the possibility of offering him the relief of such freedom as yet remained. Freedom for--for Meta Beggs. “The doctor was at the cottage again Thursday,” she informed him. “I didn't hear what he said.” “Humbugs,” August Turnbull pronounced. A sudden caution invaded him. It would be well not to implicate himself too far with his wife's companion. She was a far shrewder woman than was common; there was such a thing as blackmail. He studied her privately. Damn it, what a pen he had been caught in! Her manner, too, changed immediately, as though she had read his feeling. “I shall have to go back.” She spoke coldly. A moment before she had been close beside him, but now she might as well have been miles away. V