mental process in his case was as swift as in hers, and it was after only a brief pause between question and answer that he replied to her. 'I refuse to tell you, Mrs. Griswold. It is impossible that I should violate your husband's injunctions on this point, and I hasten to reply to your other question. I do expect you to tolerate my conduct, because you _must_ recognise that honour dictates it, though you may not understand what it costs me; and I take you for the best of wives and the most fascinating of women.' He approached her as he spoke with his hand held out, and a smile upon his face which drove the last faint scruples of prudence far from the exasperated woman whom he had so thoroughly roused; but Helen rolled her chair some feet back upon the castors, and, with a slight wave of her hand, rejected his. Very beautiful she looked--more beautiful than he had ever seen her--her great eyes ablaze, so that they shone like jewels, as she said: 'And _I_ take _you_ for the falsest of men. You have always been my enemy, and I have always known it--known it so long and so well, felt it so constantly, that it is a relief to me to tell you so. Keep this secret from me! Do you think Alston will keep it, when I ask him to explain it to me? No; you know he will not, though you would have made me despise and distrust him, if you could. Yes, you would, and you tried, tried hard, for some purpose of your own--I do not know and I do not care for what purpose--to divide us utterly. You succeeded in part--thank God, only in part did you succeed! Alston would have made me his friend and confidant only for you. But you made him contemptuous of my intelligence; you persuaded him that women are unsafe in matters of business; you divided me from one-half my husband's life, and made it a mystery to me. But for you I should have been his companion in everything. I tell you, Mr. Warren, I distrusted you from the first. I saw you had an influence which you were using ill, I--' 'You did me the honour and yourself the injury of being jealous of me, Mrs. Griswold. It is a mistake which young wives are apt to make with respect to their husbands' friends, and one which frequently costs them a good deal.' 'I was not jealous of you,' she said indignantly. 'I could not entertain so base a feeling. Why should not Alston have friends, as many and as close as he pleased? But you were his enemy--not his friend; because you were my enemy; because you would have degraded me if you could--yes, degraded me, I repeat--by making my husband treat me as a toy or an indulged pet, not as an equal associate.'