“It was sufficient for me. There could not be a stronger reason for divorce than absence of love on either side.” “The world does not agree with you,” she said. “Yet I fancy Martha would. If it came to remarriage on either side, her verdict would perhaps be condemnation; but I think she would consider separation a higher thing than a loveless marriage.” Somehow, there was a spirit in these words that touched her heart. Her voice, for the first time, was a little unsteady as she said: “You do believe that, at least! You do feel that I could never think of another marriage!” “I have always felt it. Indeed, I may say I have known it. I know that you see the inevitableness of all this as clearly as I do. I have often wished, for your sake, that I had never seen you, to put this blight upon your life.” “And have not I also blighted yours? Do you suppose that I never think of that?” “It need not trouble you, if you do. In my case there was a compensation, and a sufficient one. In your case there is none.” She knew what he meant; that his love for her, and that happy month of marriage, had been enough to pay him for having afterward lost her; and she knew that he held the fact that she had never really loved him to have barred her from any compensation at all. Why did she so resent his assuming this? Had she not told him, in language of such emphatic decision that it rang even now in her ears, that she had found out that she had made a great mistake, and that she had never loved him? He had simply taken her at her word. She wilfully ignored the true meaning of his last words, as she went on: “It is a mistake to think that my life has no compensations. My work, whether it ever amounts to anything or not, is a great compensation. The friendship of Martha is another. You are very good to wish not to take that from me; but the present sham conditions cannot be kept up after we separate. Fortune has favored us almost miraculously as it is. She heard that there was a Russian princess studying here, and some one mistakenly pointed me out for her. I had already seen her name on her canvases, and knowing that your mother and sisters were in Paris, of course I knew exactly who she was. Independent of this, her face and manner had strongly attracted me, so I saw no reason why we might not be friends, provided I could keep from her who I was. As soon as I saw that she believed me to be the princess, the fact that my aunt was a Russian and had Russian servants opened the way to my carrying on the idea; and so far there has been no trouble. My little Russian name for Sophia helped me, too. If she had known me as Sophia or Sophie, she would probably have recoiled from me, even if she had had no suspicion as to my identity.” “I beg you not to have that thought,” said Harold. “If the time ever comes when the truth must be declared to Martha, let me be the one to tell her; and I promise you there shall be no recoil--no lessening of her friendship for you.”