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"Perhaps--perhaps I knoas to see some of the influential people today Of course," Mr Jackson reluctantly conceded, "it's to be hoped they can tide him over--this ti the rest of her life in so-place for bankrupts"

Archer said nothing It seeotten should be cruelly expiated, that hisover Mrs Beaufort's doo of May's blush when the Countess Olenska had been mentioned?

Four months had passed since the ether; and since then he had not seen her He knew that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which she and Medora Manson had taken there: he had written to her once--a feords, asking when they were to ain--and she had even more briefly replied: "Not yet"

Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he had built up within hi his secret thoughts and longings Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished himents and his visions Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, hesense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent- into the furniture of his own roo most densely real and near to those about hiined he was there

He beca his throat preparatory to farther revelations

"I don't know, of course, how far your wife's family are aware of what people say about--well, about Madame Olenska's refusal to accept her husband's latest offer"

Archer was silent, and Mr Jackson obliquely continued: "It's a pity--it's certainly a pity--that she refused it"

"A pity? In God's na to the unwrinkled sock that joined it to a glossy pu to live on now?"

"Now--?"

"If Beaufort--"

Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the writing-table The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their sockets

"What the devil do you htly in his chair, turned a tranquil gaze on the youngface