“Why should it not be known?” he said. “If a woman has looked on what those eyes have seen, surely she is called upon to give her warning. If that is what marriage meant to you, God pity you! God be thanked that you are out of it!” At his words there rushed across her mind the memory of a thousand acts and thoughts and words of tenderness, of love, of strong protection, of help in need and comfort in distress, which this man beside her had given her. How could she tell him, though, that the ground of the despair which she had painted had been the renunciation of these--the thought that she had had a vision of what the love of man and woman could be in a wedded life, and had been shut out from it? Where were now the reasons that had seemed so powerful and sufficient for the course which she had taken? Why was it that, try as she might, she could get no sense of support and satisfaction from recalling these? Was it because she felt them to be the foolish qualms of an ignorant girl, who was prepared to fight against any and all conditions of life which did not answer to her whim? O God, the hideous possibilities of error and of wrong that were about one! How confident of right one might be in doing an act of weakness and of shame! She could not answer his last words. She felt herself suddenly so possessed of the sense of his nearness that she could neither collect nor control her thoughts. Her eyes were lowered, and she could not see his face; but the very sight of his strong brown hand lying ungloved upon his knee, the very bend of that knee and fold of the gray trousers, seemed as familiar to her as her own body. Suddenly she seemed to feel that he was hers, and that she was his, whether they chose to recognize the fact or not; that God had joined them, and no man, not even themselves, had power to put them asunder. Harold, meantime, was wondering at her silence. Why was it that, after her old defiant fashion, she had had no answer ready for his bitterly felt and spoken words? That picture had stung his soul, and he would have died sooner than have owned to himself even a wish to have her back. In spite of this, he could not forget that they were alone together, and that she was ill and weak, and needed pity. He wondered suddenly if he had been cruel in what he had said to her, and had put too great a tax upon her strength.