—dumb as my innocent darling lying yonder, dumb as the stones that lie at my feet.
"Sweetheart! Wife" he cries, coming a step nearer, and the old fire has come back to his eye, the old masterful vigour to his voice, "I must have you. . . . I can't live without you. Ever since that Christmas morning I have been wrestling and fighting with myself as no other devil-tempted, God-forsaken man ever fought, in vain. . . I knew that the other day, when I touched your hand at parting, for the first time for three years and more. . . When I got to Scotland, a chance remark told me that you were here alone; I set out. . . . You will come with me to-night, Nell, to-night. All is prepared, everything is in readiness; no one knows I am in Silverbridge. . . . By the morning we shall be far away. . . together at last. Oh, heavens!" he cries, with a strong wild leap of exultation in his voice, "at last. . . . I had been very doubtful about you, my beautiful darling. . . . I did not think your love would stand the test. . . . but when you said that you had been expecting me, that you thought I should have been here sooner. . . . I knew then, Nell, that your love was as perfect as mine."
A dark shadow crosses the moonlight, a white hand alights like a snow-flake on Paul's arm. He turns, and at his elbow stands Silvia, smiling. She steps through the window, and there we stand in the moonlight, that shows our faces clear as at noonday—my lover, his wife, and I. It is Paul who speaks first.
"So it is you, madam?" he says slowly. "And, pray, are you following your old and successful avocation of a spy?"
"Yes,” she says, quietly, "if following one's own husband be spying, for I have been following you. I always knew you would come back to this girl, sooner or later, and ask her to go off with you; and I always knew that, for all her proud disdainful airs, she would go—when you asked her. Don't suppose that I want to
