“No,” he said, with an asperity directed towards the disinvited guest. “We shall dine alone to-night.” But his tone made Yvonne’s heart give a great throb, and she turned to him quickly. “Has anything happened?” “A great deal,” said the Canon. Where he stood in the dusk of the doorway, the shadow accentuated the stern lines of his face and deepened the sombreness of his glance. His brows were bent in perplexities of repugnance. It was horrible to demand of her such explanations. To Yvonne’s scared fancy, his brows seemed bent in accusation. That was the pity of it. For a few seconds they looked at one another, the Canon severely, Yvonne in throbbing suspense. “What?” she asked at length. He paused for a moment, then threw his hat and the crumpled Visitors’ List on to the table and plunged into the heart of things--but not before Yvonne had glanced at the paper with a sudden pang of intuition. “Emmeline has discovered, Yvonne, that the man--” He got no further. Yvonne rushed to him with a cry of pain, clung to his arm, broke into wild words. “Don’t say any more--don’t--don’t. Spare me--for pity’s sake. I did not want you to know. I tried to keep it from you, Everard! Don’t look at me like that?” Her voice ended in a note of fright. For the Canon’s face had grown ashen and wore an expression of incredulous horror. He shook her from him. “Do you mean that this is true? That you met your first husband this morning?” “Yes,” said she, with quivering lips. Question and answer were too categorical for misunderstanding. For a moment he struggled against the overwhelming. “Are you in your right senses, Yvonne? Do you understand what I asked you? Your first husband is still alive and you saw him to-day?” “Yes,” said Yvonne again. “Didn’t you know when you came in?” “I did n’t know,” he repeated almost mechanically. The blow crushed him for a while. He stood quite rigid, drawing quick breaths, with his eyes fixed upon her. And she remained still, half-sitting on the edge of the bed, numb with a vague prescience of catastrophe, and a dim, uncomprehended intuition of the earthquake and wreck in the man’s soul. The silence grew appalling. She broke it with a faltering whisper. “Will you forgive me?” The poor little commonplace fell in the midst of devastating emotions--pathetically incongruous. “Did you know that this man was alive when you married me?” he asked in a hard voice. “No,” cried Yvonne. “How could I have married you? I thought he had been dead nearly three years.” “What proofs did you have of his death?” “A friend sent me a number of the Figaro, with the announcement.” “Was that all?” “Yes,” said Yvonne. “Do you mean to tell me,” he insisted, “that you married a second time, having no further proofs of your first husband’s death than a mere newspaper report?” “It never occurred to me to doubt it,” she replied, opening piteous, innocent eyes.