This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

ence between saying it and thinking it? Are you a better gentleman if you have such things in your heart to charge me with, but do not speak them?"

"I charge you with nothing."

"No, not with your spoken words," she said. "But to me, isn't it the same? Wait! Don't speak! I will say them for you. You are telling me in your heart that I have accepted everything and given nothing, that you have done all for me and I nothing for you. Well, I tell you that is not true. You even think that I have borne nothing from you; and I tell you that is another thing that is not true."

"What have you 'borne' from me?"

"You ask me that!" she exclaimed, thus turning his own reproach upon him; and she sprang to her feet, looking so tall, as she stood before him, that her head seemed almost as high above him as had the golden head in his uncomfortable dream. "What haven't I!" she cried. "What haven't I borne!" And she began to walk up and down the room with her hands pressed against her temples. "What haven't I!"

Nothing could have surprised him more completely; he had not come to be put upon the defensive; but already he found himself inexplicably in