I remembered in a flash that when I had first seen her I had thought there was a look about her mouth and eyes unlike that of any other woman I had known; as if she had had a different experience from theirs. Now I knew what that experience was: the black shadow of the criminal court, and the long lonely fight to save her neck. And I’d been trying to talk reason to a woman who’d been through that!

            “My poor girl—my poor child!” I held out my arms, and she fell into them and wept out her agony. There were no more words to be said; no words could help her. Only the sense of human nearness, human pity, of a man’s arms about her, and his heart against hers, could draw her out of her icy hell into the common warmth of day.

            Perhaps it was the thought of that healing warmth which made me suddenly want to take her away from the Nottingham lace curtains and the Swiss water-fall. For a while we sat silent, and I held her close; then I said: “Come out for a walk with me. There are beautiful walks close by, up through the beechwoods.”

            She looked at me with a timid smile. I knew now that she would do all I told her to; but before we started out I must rid my mind of another load. “I want to have you all to myself for the rest of the day. Where’s Miss Wilpert?” I asked.

            Miss Wilpert was away in Milan, she said, and would not be back till late. She had gone to see about passport visas and passages on a cruising liner which was sailing from Genoa to the Aegean in a few days. The ladies thought of taking the cruise. I made no answer, and we walked out through the pension garden, and mounted the path to the beechwoods.

            We wandered on for a long time, saying hardly anything to each other; then we sat down on the mossy steps of one of the little pilgrimage chapels among the trees. It is a place full of sweet solitude, and gradually it laid its quieting touch on the tormented creature at my side.

            As we sat there the day slipped down the sky, and we watched, through the great branches, the lake turning golden and then fading, and the moon rising above the mountains. I put my hand on hers. “And now let’s make some plans,” I said.

            I saw the apprehensive look come back to her eyes. “Plans—oh, why, today?”

            “Isn’t it natural that two people who’ve decided to live together should want to talk over their future? When are we going to be married—to begin with?”

            She hesitated for a long time, clasping and unclasping her unhappy hands. She had passed the stage of resistance, and I was almost sure she would not return to it again. I waited, and at length she said, looking away from me: “But you don’t like Cassie.”

            The words were a shock, though I suppose I must have expected them. On the whole, I was glad they had been spoken; I had not known how to bring the subject up, and it was better she should do it for me.

            “Let’s say, dear, that Cassie and I don’t like each other. Isn’t that nearer the truth?”

            “Well, perhaps; but—”

            “Well, that being so, Cassie will certainly be quite as anxious to strike out for herself as I shall be to—”

            She interrupted me with a sudden exclamation. “No, no! She’ll never leave me—never.”

            “Never leave you? Not when you’re my wife?”

            She hung her head, and began her miserable finger-weaving again. “No; not even if she lets me—”

            “Lets you—?”

            “Marry you,” she said in a whisper.

            I mastered her hands, and forced her to turn around to me. “Kate—look at me; straight at me. Shall I tell you something? Your worst enemy’s not Kate Spain; it’s Cassie Wilpert.”

            She freed herself from my hold and drew back. “My worst enemy? Cassie—she’s been my only friend!”

            “At the time of the trial, yes. I understand that; I understand your boundless gratitude for the help she gave you. I think I feel about that as you’d want me to. But there are other ways of showing your gratitude than by sharing the rest of your life with her.”

            She listened, drooping again. “I’ve tried every other way,” she said at length, below her breath.

            “What other ways?”

            “Oh, everything. I’m rich you know, now,” she interrupted herself, her colour rising. “I offered her the house at Cayuga—it’s a good house; they say it’s very valuable. She could have sold it if she didn’t want to live there.