half held out in pitying deprecation.

"No, Ranulph, no; I can never, never be your wife--never in this world."

For an instant he looked at her dumfounded, then turned away to the
fireplace slowly and heavily. "I suppose it was too much to hope for,"
he said bitterly. He realised now how much she was above him, even in
her sorrow and shame.

"You forget," she answered quietly, and her hand went out suddenly to the
soft curls of the child, "you forget what the world says about me."

There was a kind of fierceness in his look as he turned to her again.

"Me--I have always forgotten--everything," he answered. "Have you
thought that for all these years I've believed one word? Secours d'la
vie, of what use is faith, what use to trust, if you thought I believed!
I do not know the truth, for you have not told me; but I do know, as I
know I have a heart in me--I do know that there never was any wrong in
you. It is you who forget," he added quickly--"it is you who forget.
I tried to tell you all this before; three years ago I tried to tell you.
You stopped me, you would not listen. Perhaps you've thought I did not
know what has happened to you every week, almost every day of your life?
A hundred times I have walked here and you haven't seen me--when you were
asleep, when you were fishing, when you were working like a man in the
fields and the garden; you who ought to be cared for by a man, working
like a slave at man's work. But, no, no, you have not thought well of
me, or you would have known that every day I cared, every day I watched,
and waited, and hoped--and believed!"