"_Sylvia!_" The cry came from the hidden depths of Austin's soul, wrung with grief and shame. "I thought you never guessed---Since you did--how could you go on loving me so--how can you say what you just have--about my--_goodness_?" "Darling, _don't_! I never would have let you know that I guessed--if everything else I said hadn't failed! That wasn't a reproach! 'Go on loving you'--how could I help loving you a thousand times more than ever--when you won the greatest fight of all? It's no sin to be tempted--I'm glad you're strong enough--and human enough--for that. And I'm thankful from the bottom of my heart--that you're strong enough--and _divine_ enough--to resist temptation. But you know--even a man like you--what a sorceress plain human nature can be. What chance has a weakling like Jack Weston against her, when she leads him in the same path?" For all answer, he buried his face in the folds of her dress, and lay with it hidden, while she stroked his hair with soft and soothing fingers; she knew that she had wounded him to the quick, knew that this battle was the hardest of all, knew most surely that it was his last one, and that he would win it. Meanwhile there was nothing for her to do but to wait, unable to help him, and forced to bear alone the burden of weariness and sacrifice which was nearly crushing her. Should Austin sense, even dimly, how the sight of Edith's suffering through the long, sleepless night had brought back her own, by its reawakened memories of agony which he had taught her to forget; should divine that she, too, had counted the days to their marriage, and rejoiced that the long waiting was over, she knew that Edith's cause would be lost. She counted on the strength of the belief that most men hold--they never guess how mistakenly--that fatigue and pain are matters of slight importance among the really big things of life, and that women do not feel as strongly as they do, that there is less passion in the giving than in the taking, that mother-love is the greatest thing they ever know. Some day, she would convince him that he was wrong; but now--At last he looked up, with an expression in his eyes, dimly seen in the starlight, which brought fresh tears to hers, but new courage to her tired heart.