all too strong for the powers of darkness.

It was only when they sat again in the blissful after-calm of their
understanding, that he felt the pricking of an unappeased distrust.

"Did Madame de Treymes give you any reason for this change of
front?" he risked asking, when he found the distrust was not
otherwise to be quelled.

"Oh, yes: just what I've said. It was really her admiration of
_you_--of your attitude--your delicacy. She said that at first she
hadn't believed in it: they're always looking for a hidden motive.
And when she found that yours was staring at her in the actual words
you said: that you really respected my scruples, and would never,
never try to coerce or entrap me--something in her--poor
Christiane!--answered to it, she told me, and she wanted to prove to
us that she was capable of understanding us too. If you knew her
history you'd find it wonderful and pathetic that she can!"

Durham thought he knew enough of it to infer that Madame de Treymes
had not been the object of many conscientious scruples on the part
of the opposite sex; but this increased rather his sense of the
strangeness than of the pathos of her action. Yet Madame de Malrive,
whom he had once inwardly taxed with the morbid raising of
obstacles, seemed to see none now; and he could only infer that her
sister-in-law's actual words had carried more conviction than
reached him in the repetition of them. The mere fact that he had so
much to gain by leaving his friend's faith undisturbed was no doubt
stirring his own suspicions to unnatural activity; and this sense
gradually reasoned him back into acceptance of her view, as the most