"Kate! What is it? Why are you crying? Oh, for God's sake, _don't_!"
he ended, his hand closing on her wrist.

She steadied herself and raised her eyes to his.

"I--I couldn't help it," she stammered, struggling in the sudden release of
her pent compassion. "It seems so awful that we should stand so close to
this horror--that it might have been you who--"

"I who--what on earth do you mean?" he broke in stridently.

"Oh, don't you see? I found myself exulting that you and I were so far from
it--above it--safe in ourselves and each other--and then the other feeling
came--the sense of selfishness, of going by on the other side; and I tried
to realize that it might have been you and I who--who were down there in
the night and the flood--"

Peyton let the whip fall on the ponies' flanks. "Upon my soul," he said
with a laugh, "you must have a nice opinion of both of us."

The words fell chillingly on the blaze of her self-immolation. Would
she never learn to remember that Denis was incapable of mounting such
hypothetical pyres? He might be as alive as herself to the direct demands
of duty, but of its imaginative claims he was robustly unconscious. The
thought brought a wholesome reaction of thankfulness.

"Ah, well," she said, the sunset dilating through her tears, "don't you see
that I can bear to think such things only because they're impossibilities?
It's easy to look over into the depths if one has a rampart to lean on.
What I most pity poor Arthur for is that, instead of that woman lying