ct to be forgiven, who has brought shame on a woman."

"Not even when he has repented and atoned?"

"Atoned! How mad you are! How can there be atonement? You cannot wipe things out—on earth. We are of the earth. Records remain. If a man plays the fool, the coward, and the criminal, he must expect to wear the fool's cap, the white feather, and the leg-chain until his life's end. And now, please, let us change the subject. We have been bookish long enough." She rose with a gesture of impatience.

I did not rise. "Pardon me, Mrs. Falchion," I urged, "but this interests me so. I have thought much of Anson lately. Please, let us talk a little longer. Do sit down."

She sat down again with an air of concession rather than of pleasure.

"I am interested," I said, "in looking at this question from a woman's standpoint. You see, I am apt to side with the miserable fellow who made a false step—foolish, if you like—all for love of a selfish and beautiful woman."

"She was beautiful?"

"Yes, as you are." She did not blush at that rank compliment, any more than a lioness would, if you praised the astonishing sleekness and beauty of its skin.

"And she had been a true wife to him before that?"

"Yes, in all that concerned the code."

"Well?—Well, was not that enough? She did what she could, as long as she could." She leaned far back in the chair, her eyes half shut.

"Don't you think—as a woman, not as a theorist—that Mrs. Anson might at least have come to him when he was dying?"

"It would only have been uncomfortable for her. She had no part in his life; she could not feel with him. She could do nothing."

"But suppose she had loved him? By that memory, then, of the time when they took each other for better or for worse, until death should part them?"

"Death did part them