asked her, "Is there no way of cutting it through, mother?" Suddenly he answered his own question in a curiously musing, detached tone. "I suppose the only way in which such a situation is ever terminated is by death." "Yes," she said slowly, "but it's not a usual termination. Still, I have known it happen." More lightly she went on: "If Laura died, Godfrey wouldn't escape Katty a second time. And one must admit that she would make him an almost perfect wife." "_And if Godfrey died, mother?_" Mrs. Tropenell felt a little tremor of fear shoot through her burdened heart. This secret, intimate conversation held in the starry night was drifting into strange, sinister, uncharted channels. But her son was waiting for an answer. "I don't know how far Laura's life would alter for the better if Godfrey died. I suppose she would go on much as she does now. And, Oliver----" "Yes, mother." "I should pity and--rather despise the man who would waste his life in an unrequited devotion." He made an impatient movement. "Then do you regard response as essential in every relationship between a man and a woman?" "I have never yet known a man who did not regard it as essential," she said quietly, "and that, however he might consciously or unconsciously pretend to be satisfied with--nothing." "I once knew a man," he said, in a low, tense voice, "who for years loved a woman who seemed unresponsive, who forced him to be content with the merest crumbs of--well, _she_ called it friendship. And yet, mother, that man was happy in his love. And towards the end of her life the woman gave all that he had longed for, all he had schooled himself to believe it was not in her to give--but it had been there all the time! She had suffered, poor angel, more than he--" his voice broke, and his mother, turning towards him, laid for a moment her hand on his, as she whispered, "Was that woman at all like Laura, my darling?" "Yes--as far as a Spaniard, and a Roman Catholic, can be like Laura, she was like Laura." Even as he spoke he had risen to his feet, and during their short walk, from the bench where they had been sitting through the trees and across the lawn, neither spoke to the other. But, as he opened the house door, he said, "Good-night. I'm not coming in now; I'm going for a walk. I haven't walked all day." He hesitated a moment: "Don't be worried--I won't say don't be frightened, for I don't believe, mother, that anything could ever frighten you--if you hear me coming in rather late. I've got to think out a rather difficult problem--something connected with my business." "I hope Gillie hasn't been getting into any scrape since you've come home?" But she only spoke by way of falling in with his humour. Nothing mattered to her, or to him, just now, except--Laura. He said hastily, "Oh no,
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