It struck him that he was coolly analytical while his wife was reading the love-letter (if that bald statement of fact could be called a love-letter) of another man, and telling him frankly that she returned the man's love. Why could not he have had love, he who had done so much for her? There was always the subconsciousness of that sacrifice. He had magnified it a little, too, and it is difficult to be altogether lovable when one's mental attitude is "see what a good boy am I." But he had never reflected upon that. He went on telling himself what--in all justice to him--he had never thrown up to her, that his life had been one long devotion to her; rather as a principle than as a personality, to be sure, but then-- And yet she loved the fellow whom she had not known twenty-four hours in all--a private, a government scout, unnoticeably below her in station. In station, to be sure; but not in birth, after all. It was that again. He was always brought up face to face with her birth. He tried to reason it down, for the hundredth time. It was not her fault, and he had taken her knowingly, chancing that and the consequences of her not loving him. And these were the consequences: that she was sitting rigid before him, staring straight ahead with the pale eyes of suffering, and breathing through trembling lips. But she would die before she would be faithless to him. He was sure of that. Only--why should he exact so much? Why should he not make the last of a long score of sacrifices? He had been unselfish with her always, from the day he had found the little child, shy as one of the timid fawns in the woods of the reservation, and pretty in a wild way, until now when she sat there in front of him, a woman, and his wife, loving, and beloved of, another man. He went and stood beside her and laid his hand upon her hair. She looked up and tried hard to smile again. "Poor little girl," he said kindly. He could not help it that they were the words of a compassionate friend, rather than of an injured husband. She shook her head. "It is the first you have known of it, Jack," she said; "but I have known it for a long while, and I have not been unhappy." "And you care for him?" She nodded. "Are you certain of it? You have seen so very little of him, and you may be mistaken." If he had had any hope, it vanished before her unhesitating, positive, "No; I am not mistaken. Oh, no!" He took a chair facing her, as she put the letter back in its envelope and laid it in her work-basket. It was very unlike anything he had ever imagined concerning situations of the sort. But then he was not imaginative. "Should you be glad to be free to marry him?" he asked, in a spirit of unbiassed discussion. She looked at him in perplexity and surprise. "How could I be? There is no use talking about it." He hesitated, then blurted it out, in spite of the inward warning that it would be unwise. "I could let you free yourself."