"You are very merciless," she said, her voice shaken and uneven. "Then leave it at that," he rejoined indifferently. "I've no particular grounds for being anything else. The past is dead--and it won't stand resurrection." "Does the past ever die?" she demanded, a note of despair in her voice. "I think not." He looked at her curiously--at the beautiful face, a trifle worn and shadowed, with its sad eyes and that strangely patient curve of mouth. "What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "One pays, Eliot." He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, yes, one pays. But, in this particular instance, I thought it was I who paid and you who took delivery of the goods." She sprang up. "Then you were wrong!" she exclaimed in low, passionate tones that, in spite of himself, moved him strangely. "If you paid, I paid, too--every day of my life. Oh, I had my punishment"--with a little laugh that held more anguish than any tears. "Full measure, pressed down, running over." He bent his sombre gaze on her. "I don't think I understand," he said slowly. "Don't you?" With a swift movement she thrust back the loose tulle sleeve which veiled her arm, uncovering the ugly, rust-coloured scar which marred its whiteness. "That--that--?" He stammered off into a shocked silence, his eyes fastened on the scar, so unmistakably that of a burn. "That is the symbol of my married life," she said with a curious enforced calm. She let her sleeve fall back into its place. "Did you never hear? Dene drank--it was no secret. He was quite mad at times." "And he--ill-treated you?" "When it amused him. He had a passion for cruelty. I never knew it till I married him. I found out afterwards he had been the same even as a child. He loved torturing things." She paused, then added with a simplicity that was infinitely pitiful: "So you see, I had my punishment." "I was abroad. I never knew," said Eliot, as though in extenuation of something of which he inwardly accused himself. "I never knew," he repeated resentfully. "By God!"--with a sudden suppressed violence which was the more intense by reason of its enforced restraint--"if I'd known, I'd have freed the woman I once loved from degradation such as that!" Used so unconsciously, without intent, the word "once" wounded her more cruelly than any of his deliberately harsh and bitter utterances had had power to do. It set her definitely outside his life, relegated her to a past that was dead and done with--made her realise more completely than anything else could have done that, as far as Eliot was concerned, she no longer counted in his scheme of existence. "_The woman I once loved_"--Cara clenched her hands, and bit back the cry of pain which fought for utterance. For an instant she felt sick with pain--as though some one had turned a knife in a raw wound. Then, with an effort, she regained her self-control. "Thank you," she said gently. "But no one could have helped me--least of all you, even had you been in England."