She said nothing further, and they walked slowly off the pier and up a little bit of sloping road, whither Spartan preceded them out of an intelligent desire to show his mistress that though he had only been at Broadstairs a few hours he already knew the house they were staying at. Arrived there, Delicia held out both her hands. ‘Good-bye, my dear friend!’ she said. ‘It is a long good-bye, you know—for it is better you should see as little of me as possible.’ ‘Is it necessary to make me suffer?’ asked Valdis, unsteadily. ‘I will obey you in anything; but must you banish me utterly?’ ‘I do not banish you,’ she answered gently. ‘I only say I shall honour you more deeply and think you a truer friend than ever, if you will spare yourself and me the pain of constant meeting.’ She looked steadfastly at him; her eyes were grave and sweet; her face pale and tranquil as that of some marble saint in the niche of a votive chapel. His heart beat; all the passion and tenderness of the man were roused. He would have given his life to spare her a moment’s grief, and yet this quiet desolation of hers, united to such a holy calm, awed him and kept him mute and helpless. Bending down, he took her hands and raised them reverently to his lips. ‘Then good-bye, Delicia!’ he said; ‘Good-bye, my love—for you will be my love always! God keep you! God bless you!’ Loosening her hands as quickly as he had grasped them, he raised his hat and stood bare-headed in the shadowy evening light, gazing at her as a man might gaze who was looking his last on life itself. Then he turned swiftly and was gone. For a moment Delicia remained passively watching his retreating figure, her hand on the collar of Spartan, who manifested a wild desire to bound after him and bring him back. Then, shuddering a little, she went into the house and shut herself up alone in her bedroom for an hour. When she came out again her eyes were heavy with the shedding of tears; but such an expression was on her face as might be on the radiant features of an angel. And she was very quiet all that evening, sitting at her window and watching the clouds gradually clear, and the great stars shine out above the sea. *CHAPTER IX* The next day she received her husband’s letter, the letter in which he had excused himself altogether and started a complaint against her instead. She glanced over it with a weary sense of disgust, and smiled disdainfully as she thought what a mountain he was trying to make out of the mole-hill of the paragraph in _Honesty_. ‘As if any one of the lying tongues of journalism wagging against me could do me such wrong as his open infidelity,’ she mused. ‘God! How is it that men manage to argue away their own vices as if they were nothing, and yet take every small opportunity they can find for damaging an innocent woman’s reputation!’