"How did you get on?" she asked eagerly; "you won your case?"

"My case?" he repeated blankly, so far away did all that seem now.

"Oh, yes, my case--the Lord Chief sums up to-morrow. I think we shall get a verdict."

"Sit down and tell me all about it," she said. "I will ring for the lamp. I can"t see your face."

"No," said Mark, "don"t ring; it is better as it is."

She was struck by something in his voice.

"You are tired, dear," she said.

"Very tired," he confessed, with a heavy sigh; and then, with one of his sudden promptings, he said, "Mabel, I have just seen Vincent--he is very ill."

"I know," she said. "Is he--worse?"

"Dying," he answered gloomily. "I want to ask you a question--is it true that you have been thinking very harshly of him lately?"

"I cannot think well of him," she replied.

"Will you tell me why?" he demanded. Even then he tried to cherish the faint hope that her resentment might have another cause.

"Cannot you guess?" she asked. "Ah, no, you are too generous to feel it yourself. How can I feel kindly towards the man who could let you sacrifice your name and your prospects for a caprice of his own, who persuaded you to entangle yourself in a manner that might, for all he knew or cared, ruin you for life?"

"Even if that were so," said Mark, "he is dying, remember. Think what it would be to him to see you once more--Mabel, will you refuse to go to him?"

"He should not have asked this of me," cried Mabel. "Oh, Mark, you will think me hard, unchristian, I know, but I can"t do this--not even now, when he is dying ... he ought not to have asked it."

"Mabel," he cried, "he did not ask it--you do not know him if you think that. Do you still refuse?"

"I must, I must," repeated Mabel. "Oh, if it had been I who was the injured one, I do not think I should feel like this; it is for you I cannot forgive. If I went now, what good would it do? Mark; it is wicked of me, but I could not say what he would expect--not yet, not yet--you must not ask me."

Mark knew now that the decisive moment had come: there was only one way left of moving her; there was no time to lose if he meant to take it.

Must he speak the words which would banish him from his wife"s heart for ever, just when hope had returned to his life, just when he had begun to feel himself worthier of her love? It was so easy to say no more, to leave her in her error, and the shadow would pa.s.s away, and his happiness be secure. But could he be sure of that? The spectre had risen so many times to mock him, would it ever be finally laid? And if Mabel learnt the truth when it was too late?--no, he could not bear to think of what would happen then?

And yet how was he to begin--in what words could he break it to her?

His heart died within him at the duty before him, and he sat in the firelit room, tortured with indecision, and his good and bad angel fought for him. And then, all at once, almost in spite of himself, the words came:

"Mabel," he cried, "Holroyd has done nothing--do you hear?--nothing to call for forgiveness ... oh, if you could understand without my saying more!"

She started, and her voice had an accent, first of a new hope, then of a great fear.

"Is Vincent better than he seemed? But how can that be if--tell me, Mark, tell me everything."

Mark shrank back; he dared not tell her.

"Not now," he groaned. "My G.o.d! what am I doing? Mabel, I can"t tell you; have pity on yourself--on me!"

She rose and came to him. "If you have anything to tell me, tell me now," she said. "I am quite strong; it will not hurt me. You must not leave me in this uncertainty--_that_ will kill me! Mark, if you love me, I entreat you to save me from being unjust to Vincent. Remember, he is dying--you have told me so!"

He rose and went to the sideboard; there was water there, and he poured some out and drank it before he could speak. Then he came back to the fireplace, and leaned against the mantelboard.

"You will hate me before I have finished," he said at last, "but I will tell you."

And then he began, and painfully, with frequent breaks and nervous hurrying at certain pa.s.sages, he told her everything--the whole story of his own shame and of Holroyd"s devotion. He did not spare himself; he did not even care to give such excuses as might have been made for him in the earlier stages of his fraud. If his atonement was late, it was at least a full one.

She listened without a word, without even a sob, and when he had come to the end she sat there silent still, as if turned to stone. The stillness grew so terrible that Mark could bear no more.

"Speak to me, Mabel," he cried in his agony, "for G.o.d"s sake, speak to me!"

She rose, supporting herself with one trembling hand; even in the firelight her face was deathly pale. "Take me to him first," she said, and the voice was that of a different woman, "after that I will speak to you."

"To Vincent?" he asked, half stupefied by what he was suffering. "Not to-night, Mabel, you must not!"

"I must," she replied; "if you will not take me I shall go alone--quick, let us lose no time!"

He went out into the main road and hailed a cab, as he had done often enough before for one of their journeys to dinner or the theatre; when he returned Mabel was already standing cloaked and hooded at the open door.

"Tell him to drive fast--fast," she said feverishly, as he helped her into the hansom, and she did not open her lips again till it stopped.

He glanced at her face now and then, when the shop-lights revealed her profile as she lay back in her corner; it was pale and set, her eyes were strained, but she had shed no tears; he sat there and recalled the merry journeys they had had together, side by side, on evenings like this, when he had been sorry the drive should ever end--how long this one was!

The cab reached Cambridge Terrace at last. Mark instinctively looked at the upper windows of the house--they were all dark. "Stay here, till I have asked," he said to Mabel before he got out, "we may--we may be too late."

Vincent had been moved to his sleeping-room, where he was sitting in his arm-chair; the trained nurse who had been engaged to wait upon him had left him for a while, the light was lowered, and he was lying still in the dreamy exhaustion which was becoming more and more his normal state.

He had received his death-warrant some months before; the hara.s.sing struggles against blight and climate in Ceylon, the succession of illnesses which had followed them, and the excitement and anxiety that he underwent on his return, had ended in an affection of the heart, which, by the time he thought it sufficiently serious to need advice, was past all cure.

He had heard the verdict calmly, for he had little to make him in love with life, but while the book in which he had already begun to find distraction was unfinished, there was still work for him to do, and he was anxious to leave it completed. If the efforts he made to effect this shortened his life, they at least prevented him from dwelling upon its approaching end, and his wish was gratified. He fixed his mind steadily on his task, and though each day saw less accomplished and with more painful labour, the time came when he reached the last page and threw down his pen for ever.

Now he was on the brink of the stream, and the plash of the ferryman"s oar could be heard plainly; the world behind him had already grown distant and dim; even of the book which had been in his mind so long, he thought but little--he had done with it all; whether it brought him praise or blame from man, he would never learn now, and was content to be in ignorance.

The same lethargy had mercifully deadened to some extent the pain of Mabel"s injustice, until Mark"s visit had revived it that afternoon.

He had come to think of it all now without bitterness; it might be that in some future state she would "wake, and remember, and understand," and the wrong be righted--but it had always seemed to him that in another existence all earthly misunderstandings must seem too infinitely pitiful and remote to be worth unravelling, or even recalling, and so he could not find much comfort there.

But at least he had not been worsted in the conflict with his lower nature. Mabel"s happiness was now secure from the worst danger, the struggle was over, and he was glad, for there had been times when he had almost sunk under it.

So he was thinking dreamily as he sat there while now and then a cloud would drift across his thoughts as he lost himself in a kind of half slumber.

He was roused by sounds on the stairs outside, and presently he heard a light step in the farther room. "I am not asleep," he said, believing the nurse had returned.

"Vincent," said a low tremulous voice, "it is I--Mabel." Then he looked up, and even in that half light he saw that the figure standing there in the open doorway was the one which had been chief in his thoughts.

Unprepared as he was for such a visitor, he felt no surprise--only a deep and solemn happiness as he saw her standing before him.

"You have come then," he said; "I am very glad. You must think less hardly of me--or you would not be here."