“I have nothing but contempt and hatred for this woman, but you I pity.” “Only pity!” he groaned; but she continued: “You know I never professed anything but pity for you. My love was given elsewhere before I was drawn into that mockery of a marriage that chained me, an unloving wife, to your side.” She paused, drew a long, quivering breath, and continued: “You know I have tried to do my duty by you--that I will still try.” “Yes, yes,” he cried, in a tone of infinite relief. He had feared that she meant to apply for a divorce, and in the madness of his love he was too selfish to bear such a suggestion. “You would not leave me, Daisie--ill and crippled? It would be heartless!” he cried weakly, in his agitation. All his pity was for himself--none for her, so beautiful, so helpless, so cruelly wronged by every additional hour of this bondage of a loveless marriage. She answered, with the calmness of a great despair: “I must leave you, Royall, for a while--a little while--because I should go mad just now without a change of some sort. I shall go to-morrow down to Gull Beach for a few weeks with Aunt Alice. You must do without me while I wrestle in silence with a grief beyond all telling, and gain strength by prayer to take up my burden and face the world again.” A pause to gather courage, and she added: “Annette tells me she has a letter from home to-day. Her mother is sick, and begs her to return. She goes to-morrow, and I shall accompany her on her journey.” It was true. Annette had seized on the first excuse that offered to leave New York. It seemed to her that she could not breathe the same air with Ray Dering--he had come, and she must go. “Oh, Daisie, you will soon return?” he half sobbed, breaking down utterly. She moved to his side, and asked earnestly: “Tell me--if you could have known what she was doing that night, would you have joined in that infamous plot against my happiness?” No matter what he would have done, he knew, at this moment that his only salvation lay in denying it now. He answered quickly: “No, never!” “Then I will return,” she answered, from the depths of her true womanly pity, and swept from the room without another glance at the cruel woman who had wrought all her woe. CHAPTER XXXV. “GOD HELP US!” The sky was as blue as summer, the air was soft and bland, and the little, laughing wavelets at Gull Beach, rippled by the April breeze, rolled softly in upon the yellow sands. It was three weeks now since Daisie and Annette had come away from New York back to Maryland--three weeks since the morning when Daisie had stooped over Royall while he held her hands, and kissed him with cold, unresponsive lips, while she said: “God help us both to bear this sorrow!” She could not hate him, or be angry with him, because his love and his affliction made her generous heart very kind and pitiful, and she realized that the cross of suffering lay heavy on them both.