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"Ellen--I "

"Yes"

"I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn't put it in a letter It was Riviere who helped you to get ahen you left your husband?"

His heart was beating suffocatingly Would she meet this question with the sareat debt," she answered, without the least tremor in her quiet voice

Her tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that Archer's tured, by her sheer simplicity, to ht he was flinging convention to the winds

"I think you're the most honest woman I ever met!" he exclaimed

"Oh, no--but probably one of the least fussy," she answered, a smile in her voice

"Call it what you like: you look at things as they are"

"Ah--I've had to I've had to look at the Gorgon"

"Well--it hasn't blinded you! You've seen that she's just an old bogey like all the others"

"She doesn't blind one; but she dries up one's tears"

The answer checked the pleading on Archer's lips: it seemed to come from depths of experience beyond his reach The slow advance of the ferry-boat had ceased, and her bows buainst the piles of the slip with a violence thatArcher and Mada, felt the pressure of her shoulder, and passed his arm about her

"If you're not blind, then, youtogether--and not together"

"No You ought not to have come today," she said in an altered voice; and suddenly she turned, flung her arms about hie began to ht into theShe dreay, and they sat silent and estion of carriages about the ferry-landing As they gained the street Archer began to speak hurriedly

"Don't be afraid of me: you needn't squeeze yourself back into your corner like that A stolen kiss isn't what I want Look: I' to touch the sleeve of your jacket Don't suppose that I don't understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because e've been apart, and I'ht is burnt up in a great flame But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, astes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision into it to come true"