"And don't you think I know how to do that?" she asked. "Just see whether I can't act the working-man's wife if you will only help to save me from--from the awful fate that threatens me. Say you will, Wilfrid," she gasped, taking my hand again. "You will not desert me now, will you? Remember you are the only friend I dare go to in my present trouble. You will not refuse to be known in Camberwell as my husband-- will you?" I was silent. Was any living man ever placed in dilemma more difficult? What could I reply? That she was in real deep earnest I saw from her white, drawn countenance. The dark rings around her eyes told their own tale. She was desperate, and she declared that by acting as she suggested I could save her. The dead, staring, clean-shaven countenance of that man in the wood arose before me, and I held my breath, my eyes fixed upon hers. She saw that I hesitated to compromise her and implicate myself. Then slowly she raised my hand to her lips and kissed it, saying in a strange voice, so low that I hardly caught the words,-- "Wilfrid, I--I can tell you no more. My life is entirely in your hands. Save me, or--or I will kill myself. I dare not face the truth. Give me my life. Do whatever you will. Suspect me; hate me; spurn me as I deserve, but I crave mercy of you--I crave of you life--life!" And releasing me she stood motionless, her hands clasped in supplication, her head bent, not daring to look me again in the face. What could I think? What, reader, would you have thought? How would you have acted in such circumstances? CHAPTER SEVEN. IN WHICH I PLAY A DANGEROUS GAME. Well--I agreed. Yes--I agreed to pose as the hard-working compositor upon a daily newspaper and husband of the Honourable Sybil Burnet, the woman by whose hand the unknown man had fallen. At first I hesitated, refusing to compromise her, yet she had fallen upon her knees imploring me to help her, and I was bound to fulfil the promise I had so injudiciously made. There was no love between us now, she had declared. The flame had flickered and died out long ago. "If you will only consent to act as though I were your wife, then I may be able to save myself," she urged. "You will do so, will you not?" "But why?" I had asked. "I cannot see how our pretended marriage can assist you?" "Leave it all to me," was her confident reply. "One day you will discern the reason." And then, with tears in her beautiful eyes, and kneeling at my feet, she begged again of me to act as she suggested and thus save her life. So I consented. Yes--you may say that I was foolish, that I was injudicious, that I was still beneath the spell of her exquisite grace and matchless beauty. Perhaps I was: yet I tell you that at the moment so stunned was I by the tragedy, by what Eric had revealed, and by her midnight visit, that I hardly knew what I did.