Pamela did not sleep at all. The unexpected receipt of Dare's telegram excited her, and kept her on the rack of expectation. She had not looked for him to return. The telegram was the only communication she had received from him, and it told her nothing, save that he was back and wished to see her. She knew that he must have something of importance to tell her or he would not have turned back so soon. The thought of the coming interview was vaguely disquieting. So much had passed between her and this man of a painful and intimate nature that all the barriers of conventional friendship were down, and left her exposed, as he was, to the onslaught of each new emotion inspired by their mutual feeling. She had thought of him so much since he had pleaded his cause with her, and she had admitted her own love for him,-- had reviewed all their pleasant intercourse of the past, his kind, patient, and unselfish devotion which later, in accepting her decision, had yet lent itself to aid her in her unprotected and difficult position, that the love which she had confessed to bearing for him had strengthened considerably. She looked up to him as to some one strong and fine and worthy of a woman's entire trust. Never for the man she had believed to be her husband had she felt this reverence of love. She had admired him, had felt grateful to him for his passionate ardour for herself. Their marriage had proved a delirious period of excitement and delight, until his passion cooled; but it had never roused in her a lofty conception of love, or helped her to realise the seriousness of life's responsibilities. Her life as Arnott's wife had tended rather to lower the standard of fine thinking, and reduce the principles of living to the sensuous indolence of self-gratification, and an immense concentration upon the importance of purely personal things. She had lived for herself, detached in sympathy from the wider world about her, careless of the joys and sorrows of others as something altogether outside her life. And now sorrow had brought her into touch with the world, had broadened her sympathies and her understanding, and decreased proportionately the sense of her personal significance. What is any life, however important to itself, however aggrandised by the world's recognition, however necessary it may appear to others--to one other even, but a breath which expands the lungs of the universe and leaves them temporarily deflated as it passes on into the beyond? CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. Pamela was alone and waiting for Dare when he presented himself at the house on the following morning. She turned slowly when the door of the room opened, and advanced to meet him with a look of inquiry and of welcome in her eyes.