"These were written two years ago," said she in a sad voice, as she folded them together, "a year after we were married." It was the tone of her voice that did it--as she handed the letters back to him, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. He put them back in the bureau without a word. He felt that he had struck the innocent again and most cruelly. Then he came back to the chair on which he had been sitting and stood holding its back. "You see how we are both placed," said he. "To prove your husband's death, all my business would have to be raked up. I don't mind, because I have acted straight, but you would mind. The fact of his suicide, the fact of his sending me home--everything, that would hit you again and again. Yet, look at your position--I do not know what we are to do. If I go away and go back to the States, I leave you before the world as the wife of a man still living who has deserted you, if I stay and go on being the Earl of Rochester, you are tied to a phantom." He paced the floor, head down, wrestling with an insoluble problem, whilst she sat looking at him. "Which is the easiest for you to do?" asked she. "Oh, me," said he; "I'm not thinking of myself--back to the States, of course, but that's out of the question--there are lots of easy things to do, but when my case comes in contact with yours, there's nothing easy to do. Do you think it was easy for me to go off that night and leave you waiting for me, feeling that you thought me a skunk? No, that was not easy." She had been sitting very calm and still up till now, then suddenly she looked down. She burst into tears. "Oh," she cried, "why were you not him--if he had only been you. He cared nothing for me, yet I loved him--you--you--" "I care for nothing at all but you," said he. She shuddered all over and turned her head away. "That's the mischief of it as far as I am concerned," he went on. "I can't escape without injuring you and so myself--yet I don't wonder at your hating me." She turned her face to him, it was flushed and wet. "I do not hate you," said she; "you are the only man I ever met--unselfish." "No," he said, "I'm selfish. It's just because I love you that I think of you more than myself, and I love you because you are good and sweet. I could not do you wrong just because of that. If you were another woman, I would not bother about you. I'd be cruel enough, I reckon, and go off and leave you tied up, and get back to the States--but you are you, and that's my bother. I did not know till now how I was tied to you; yesterday at that asylum place and all last night I did not think of you. My one thought was to get away. I came here to-day, driven by want of money. I was so angry with the whole business, I determined to go on being Rochester--then you came into my mind and I sent Church to ask you to come and see me--much good it has done." "I don't know," she said. He looked at her quickly. Her glance fell.