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At length she said: "I believe it's because of you"

It was impossible to make the confessionto the vanity of the person addressed Archer reddened to the temples, but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been soht drive off on startled wings, but that ather a flock about it if it were left undisturbed

"At least," she continued, "it was you who s so fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in coether her troubled brows--"but it seems as if I'd never before understood with how much that is hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasuresto have had the; but the appeal in her eyes kept him silent

"I want," she went on, "to be perfectly honest with you--and withtiht tell you how you've helpedbeneath frowning brows He interrupted her with a laugh "And what do you make out that you've made of me?"

She paled a little "Of you?"

"Yes: for I' much more than you ever were of mine I'm the man who married one woman because another one told hiht--you pros today"

"Ah--how like a woh!"

She lowered her voice "IS it a bad business--for May?"

He stood in the , dru in every fibre the wistful tenderness hich she had spoken her cousin's naot to think of--haven't we--by your own showing?" she insisted

"My own showing?" he echoed, his blank eyes still on the sea

"Or if not," she continued, pursuing her own thought with a painful application, "if it's not worth while to have given up, to have s, so that othersI ca that made my other life seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took account of thes are a sha from his place "And in that case there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't go back?" he concluded for her