turned to the window to hide his working face. "Do you wonder," he added
softly, "that her poor little wraith comes back to trouble me?"

"Come, come, no need to be morbid! You made a mistake, but you have
paid. As for the doubt which troubles you--it is but the figment of a
tired brain. The mother could have had no possible reason for deceiving
you. You were no longer an ineligible student--and the girl loved you.
Besides, there was the legal tie. Would any woman condemn her daughter
to a false position for life? And without reason? The idea is
preposterous. Come now, admit it!"

"Oh, I admit it! My reasoning powers are still unimpaired. But reason
has nothing to do with that kind of mental torture. It is my soul that
has been sick; it is my soul that must be cured. And to come back to the
very point from which we started, I believe I shall find that cure
here--in Coombe."

"With Mrs. Sykes?" dryly.

"Certainly. Mrs. Sykes is part of the cure."

"And the other part?"

"Oh--just everything. I hardly know why I like the place. But I do. Why
analyse? I can sleep here. I wake in the morning like a man with the
right to live, and for the first time in a year, Willits, a long
torturing year, I am beginning to feel free of that oppression, that
haunting sense that somewhere Molly is alive, that she needs me and that
I cannot get to her. I had begun to fear that it would drive me mad.
But, here, it is going. Yesterday I was walking down a country road and