Her divine and selfless nature had made the offer. He had unequivocally refused it. The incident was therefore closed. Ostrich-wise he hid his head from its consequent influences in their relations, and regarded them as non-existent. That was the humorous aspect of his moral attitude. On the other hand he believed in himself and in his strength of will to withstand temptation. He knew that Irene was too strong and proud a woman to desire marriage with him as a social rehabilitation. In fact, the thought insulted her. He could not conceive that she loved him, wanted him for her own sake. As for himself, he could set his teeth and defy the heart-hunger. Should she speak again, he would disclose to her the fact of his marriage. He hoped that no necessity would arise.

Some weeks passed. They saw each other frequently, but there were many little flaws in the frankness of their intercourse to which he wilfully blinded himself. There were times when a chance sweetness of look or phrase set his heart beating madly; when, also, a chance wistfulness in her manner brought back vividly the full meaning of Harroway’s offer, and made him curse its futility. After a while she appeared to grow less cheerful. She would regard him with a little tender air of surprised reproach, which he attributed to the weariness of her lot. One Saturday night they walked from Bedford Square, where the Cahusacs lived, to Hyde Park Corner, before they took the omnibus for High Street, Kensington. In spite of the bright, evening they had just spent, the walk was singularly silent. Towards the end she leaned on his arm, feeling tired. Involuntarily he drew her closer to him, but the constraint grew greater. In the omnibus he asked her whether she felt down-hearted. She alleged a headache. His ready sympathy sprang to her. Why had she walked all that distance? To see whether exercise would remedy it, she replied.

“Life is weighing upon you, Renie,” he said, as he parted from her at her door.

“It is Hugh—a little,” she answered. And the stone-staircase was not too dimly lighted for him not to perceive once more the curious, reproachful surprise in her glance.

He went away full of passionate remorse for what he had brought upon her. Her life was crushing her. A desperate remedy flashed through his mind. A terrible temptation. Yet keenly sensitive to that within him which concerned Irene, he perceived an ugly leering selfishness beneath the surface, and he put the temptation from him.

Meanwhile the series of articles over the signature “Delta” had attracted attention. Her identity leaked out. A paragraph appearing in the literary notes of one journal, and copied by several others, revealed it to the general public. In these modern days a pseudonym is as effective a disguise as a jacket worn inside out. She was disturbed in mind, dreading publicity. “Delta” had become as soiled a name as “Irene Merriam.” Would not that lessen the influence of her work? Men would pass her articles by with a contemptuous shrug, and her appeals would be unheeded. To cry in the wilderness is task enough; to cry in a voice scorned by the few stragglers who hear, would have depressed the Baptist himself.

Then there came a day, shortly after her walk from Bedford Square with Hugh, when Jane brought her a gentleman’s card bearing a name with which she was unfamiliar and a pencilled legend—“Women’s Democratic League.” She decided to see the visitor. A red-haired man with dubious linen and persuasive manners was admitted. She motioned him to a chair. He put his hat on the ground and explained his mission. Her articles had been so appreciated by the League that he had been deputed to invite her to lecture on behalf of that body. Irene was gratified but alarmed. Writing was one thing, lecturing another.

“I am sorry to refuse,” she told the man, “but I have given up my little attempts at public life.”

“That is a great pity, Mrs. Merriam. So many would welcome you back again. Do think over it. We can promise you a most enthusiastic audience. In fact, we might scheme out a short tour—all expenses paid and a handsome percentage on the takings. Your name would draw.”

“You are mistaken,” said Irene frankly. “Besides——”

“Oh, no,” he interrupted quickly. “Your name is so well known—all over England. People would run to see you. Putting things on a commercial basis, so long as people come, their object doesn’t matter.”

Then Irene saw. For a moment, she gasped for breath. It was a calm proposal to make capital out of her notoriety. She rose and pressed the electric bell by her side, and turned upon him with flaming cheeks, and anger in her eyes.

“How dare you!” she cried.

The man took up his hat and broke into apologies. Jane appeared at the door.

“Show this person out,” said Irene.

The democratic delegate retired ignominiously. Irene walked about the room, mechanically rearranging perfectly orderly arranged trifles, in the feminine way, dazed with wrath and humiliation. A short while afterwards, she did not know whether to rage against the abandoned cynicism of the proposal, or to laugh cynically at her own touching simplicity in the matter of her former mental disquietude. In the midst of her anger arrived Elinor Cahusac on a flying call. Irene related the scene midway between tears and laughter. Mrs. Cahusac listened, sympathised, and, as soon as she reached her home, informed her husband of the insult that had been offered to Irene. And the next afternoon Cahusac, meeting Hugh by chance, in the Strand, repeated his wife’s story. An hour later Hugh was ringing furiously at Irene’s door.

He found her sitting before the fire, with her writing-board on her lap. She raised startled eyes as he entered, laid his hat and stick on a table, and came to her side. She rose instinctively, leaving the board on the broad arm of the chair.

“Is what Cahusac tells me true, Renie?” he cried impetuously—“about that scoundrel insulting you yesterday?”

“I told Elinor something.”

“And why did you not tell me last evening?”

“What use would there be in worrying you for nothing?” she replied evasively.

The light of the chandelier beneath which she was standing fell upon her averted face. The heaviness of her eyelids struck him; a crumpled ball of a handkerchief in her hand confirmed the betraying lids.

“And I come in unexpectedly and find you crying. You would not have told me the cause of that either.”

“I have no right to worry you,” she replied again.

“I wish to God I had the right to make you,” he cried passionately, goaded by the insult offered her and by the evidence of her unhappiness.

“I don’t think you do,” she said in a low voice.

“I?” he queried.

Taking her by the wrist, he impulsively led her to the sofa and seated her by his side.

“This state of things cannot go on,” he said harshly. “We are losing each other. I must explain. I will tell you about that woman, the one you know of.”

Irene started away from him, as though the word were a lash.

“Is she between us? I don’t want to hear a breath of her. I won’t listen. What is she to me? Let us continue in the old way.”

“We have come to the end of it,” said Hugh.

“Do you love her?” she asked, fiercely.

“I have every reason to hate and despise her,” said Hugh between his teeth. “You know very well that I love you with every fibre of my being.”

Irene held him with her eyes. The few seconds seemed an incalculable time.

“And you know that I love you with all my heart and soul. So why will you not take me?” she said slowly.

He sprang to his feet.

“You love me—like that?”

The great wonder of glory that suddenly held his soul in awe, shone from his eyes, dazzling and confusing the woman, whose own lowered tremulously.

“Like that?” he repeated. “Say it again.”

“I have told you too much already,” she murmured. And then the woman’s tears and tenderness all gushed forth, and she raised swimming eyes to him.’ “Oh, Hugh dear, why did you make me tell you?” In a moment she was sobbing in his arms, clinging to him, yielding herself to the ecstatic solace. Half shamed, she drooped her head and hid her face against his breast, and he held her tightly to him. Then there was a long great silence. The woman’s heart drank thirstily of the intoxicating flood of happiness. But the man’s burned white hot in the stress of agonising conflict. She could not see his drawn face. His short sharp breathing only told her of emotion too deep for words. Its pain did not pierce through her bliss. Her fair head rested contentedly against the molten furnace. Through such brief, fierce, soul-scorching fires come the tremendous decisions of life.

“Will you marry me, Irene?” he said at last.

She moved her head for a moment, like a child. Then she raised it, and drew herself gently from him.

“Do you know why I was crying—a woman is a fool, Hugh dear—when you came in?”

“Why?”

“I thought you did not want me. It was bitter. A turning of the tables.”

“Since when have you loved me?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Always, perhaps,” she replied, turning away. “It’s a question you must never ask me.”

How or when it had come she knew not. What woman does? Often she may point back to some spring morning of the heart, when love burst into blossom, and say: “Then I knew.” But she is aware that the petals had long lain delicately folded in the sheaths, and is dimly reminiscent of growth and expansion. To the how and when of that she can return no answer. But Irene looked back and found strange tendernesses working darkly through all the years. Could it have been possible——? Her womanhood shrank frightened from the suggestion—then tiptoed, with held breath, up to it again. The union of the two men in her affection had dated from the first day they had spoken to her on the P. & O. steamer, and it had existed continuously until one broke away, leaving the other untouched. Hugh’s loyal love for her had been one of the inner glories of her life. She had felt it to be the complement of Gerard’s. So much was clear. But was her own affection for Hugh complementary to her love for Gerard? Could her feelings towards Gerard have maintained their homogeneousness without the other influence? Was it, in brief, an inextricable dual love? She found no answers. All was a mystery—like the colour of an opal, with an elusive white of shame. Yet no thought of longing unsatisfied had ever tinged the purity of her wifely worship. There her soul was free from doubt. Yet again, on the other hand, Hugh had ever been inexpressibly dear to her. The cult of their idealised brotherhood had further fused these complex emotions together, thereby rendering the mystery more inscrutable.

“I can never tell you,” she repeated. “Never. Oh, Hugh dear, I have been so lost and lonely.”

His arm closed protectingly round her.

“Forgive me, dear,” she said. “I once thought you a weak man—perhaps that is why I did not love you at first. But now I know that you are strong—and I need your strength.”

That was the deep key-note of her happiness. Once she had compared the two men; rock and shifting sand. Idolatry had inverted her vision. It had been shifting sand and rock. She was safe on the rock now. Often, lately, had she looked back, in sickened wonder, upon that idolatry. The whole of her true life with Gerard had revealed itself: the dull taciturnity she had revered as strength, the ungracious compliances she had raised to tendernesses or noble actions, the hundred faults she had transfigured to virtues. In vain she looked for one sparkling deed, one act of unselfishness, one spontaneous loving caress that she had treasured, even one proof of more than common mental attainment. In the very work-a-day business of life he had deceived her; his practice at the bar was worth little or nothing. She was stupefied at her own delusion.

But now she was safe. Now she looked back upon Hugh’s life, and saw it filled with innumerable deeds of devotion and loyalty. His brilliance in the world was a matter not of blind faith but of direct testimony. His heroism had not been potential but actually displayed. Twice she had known him to face death. Once to save his friend’s life. Once to save a woman’s honour. Of the latter she was convinced. Convinced also of his impeccability as regards the woman. On the part this creature had played in his life she was too proud to speculate. He did not love her. That was certain. It sufficed the hungering woman. The strong soul refused to seek further. Yes, she was safe; the foundations of her life laid on the living rock. The overwhelming happiness of it!

She stood before him radiant. A black silk blouse, with frilled upstanding collar lightly caressing her throat, heightened the glow in her face. He had studied its infinite variety of expression, and knew it in all its phases, enthusiasm, anger, sorrow, gentleness. To-day it was a revelation. To only one man in her life can a woman reveal the full glory of her soul and sex. The last shreds of his compunction were swept away by a mighty wave of pride.

“I would have gone through hell-fire to win you,” he said.

She smiled, happily unconscious of his allusion, and replied in tender raillery.

“You have only had to go through the hollow form of asking me. Was it so hard?”

“I should never have asked you to marry me out of pity.”

“I knew that,” she replied. “And now—are you sure that you will be happy?”

“Happy?” he echoed.

He laughed, walked across the room, back again, and ran his fingers through his hair. The happiness began to intoxicate him. He stopped before her and took both her hands.

“Do you know what a man’s love is?” he cried.

He paced his room that night in a hot fever of joy, with pulses throbbing and nerves vibrating. Irene’s love was his at last, his for ever, to change life from an ill-weeded garden to glittering fields of an unimagined heaven beyond hyperbole of speech. To preserve the ineffable gift, he would take upon himself the burden of a hundred crimes. In this hour of rapture the burden of the one he had resolved to commit sat lightly on his shoulders. She ran no risk. The secret of the marriage was safe. It had lain buried in the Brighton Registrar’s office through all the lurid publicity of the trial. Minna would keep it beyond the shadow of a doubt. Anna Cassaba was bound body and soul to Minna. And then the crime was for the adored one’s greater happiness. It would lift from her the crushing weight of social loneliness. It would flood her life with the passion of a man’s worship. The vision of the full harmonious days to come rose up before him. He laughed aloud. There are times when a man feels strong enough to defy Fate.