'Give me to-night, just to think. Perhaps one of the old stories
I have thrown aside will come back in a clearer light. I'll go
out for an hour; you don't mind being left alone?'

'You mustn't think of such trifles as that.'

'But nothing that concerns you in the slightest way is a trifle
to me--nothing! I can't bear that you should forget that. Have
patience with me, darling, a little longer.'

He knelt by her, and looked up into her face.

'Say only one or two kind words--like you used to!'

She passed her hand lightly over his hair, and murmured something
with a faint smile.

Then Reardon took his hat and stick and descended the eight
flights of stone steps, and walked in the darkness round the
outer circle of Regent's Park, racking his fagged brain in a
hopeless search for characters, situations, motives.



CHAPTER V. THE WAY HITHER

Even in mid-rapture of his marriage month he had foreseen this
possibility; but fate had hitherto rescued him in sudden ways
when he was on the brink of self-abandonment, and it was hard to
imagine that this culmination of triumphant joy could be a