"Well? Any news?" "No. None." Owen slipped off his thick coat and sank down, wearily, into a chair. "No one has seen anything of her. The hotel people didn't hear her go, and no one has the faintest notion where she went." He shivered, holding out his hands to the blaze. "Herrick, where can she be? My God, I'd give ten years of my life now to know she was safe. But to think of her wandering about in the fog--not daring--not even wanting--to come home ... thinking always of me as the selfish brute who neglected her and laughed aside her wishes...." He paused a moment, then began again. "It wouldn't be so bad if she'd been in love with that fool who was here to-night. I could have understood her going off with him then. But it was me she loved all along--she was thinking of me when she went out into the cruel night to join him.... I'm very certain she shrank from the step ... well, events prove it, don't they? ... but she was thinking only of my good and so she nerved herself to do it...." "Yes." Herrick spoke quietly. "There's no doubt, I think, that your wife loved you as very few men are loved. It seems--forgive me--a cruel jest of Fate that you couldn't return her love...." "But I _did_--and _do_!" Owen's voice rang out with all its old force. "Before God, man, I do love Toni ... oh, I didn't at first. I confess I married her without caring for her as a man should care for the woman he makes his wife. But I've grown fonder of her ever since. Oh, I know it's all true, what that fellow said--I've been thoughtless, unkind, I did neglect her, did let her see how I despised her help, but you don't know what it is to a man to find his work spoilt for the lack of a little intelligent sympathy.... Oh, I'm not excusing myself--I had no right to put my work before everything else--even before Toni--and I did. But God knows I'm punished for it now." Again he broke off abruptly, only to go on again hastily. "I own I was mistaken in my reading of Toni's character. I had no idea she was capable of this sort of sacrifice." "You never saw into the depths of her soul. If you had----" "I should have realized what she was. Oh, I know," said Owen, with humility, "I know now that Toni is a woman, and I pray to God with all my soul that my knowledge has not come too late." "You think if you got her back now you might be happy together?" "Happy? If I could make Toni happy, she would be happy indeed." His tone was still tinged with that new humility, and in that dreary hour Herrick began to understand him better than he had ever dreamed of doing. When at last the grey dawn crept through the large windows Herrick rose to go. "I'll get off home for an hour or two. You'd better try to have a sleep, Rose. We can't do anything more just yet; and it's no use wasting one's strength." "Very well." Owen rose and stretched himself, yawning. "I won't go to bed--I'll sleep on the couch here. You see she might come at any moment."