Husband and wife did not speak while they were being driven across the city to their home. That which lay between them was too heavy to be touched upon at once in words. Several times the architect glanced fearfully at his wife. She rested limply on the carriage cushion, with closed eyes, and occasionally a convulsive tremor twitched her body. The summer heat, which had raged untempered for weeks, had already sapped her usual strength, and now her face had a bloodless pallor that made the man wince miserably. When the cab stopped at the North Side bridge, where a burly vessel was being pulled through the draw, Helen opened her eyes languidly; once or twice she sought her husband\'s face, which was turned blankly toward the crowded street. Her lips moved, and then she closed her eyes again. As they got out of the cab, a neighbor who was passing spoke to them and made a little joke, to which Jackson replied pleasantly, with perfect self-control. The woman leaning on his arm shivered, as if a fresh chill had seized her.

The children were spending the month in Wisconsin with Jackson\'s mother, and so the two sat down to a silent dinner. When the maid had come and gone for the last time, Hart looked furtively across the table to his wife and said gently:—

"Won\'t you go upstairs, Nell? You don\'t look able to sit up."

She shook her head and tried to speak, but her voice was gone. Finally she whispered:—

"Francis, you must tell me all about it,—everything!"

He frowned and said nothing, until she repeated, "Everything, you must tell me!" and then he replied:—

"See here, Nell, you\'d better drop this thing and not think of it again. That man Pemberton, who has pestered the life out of me all along, has made a row. He\'s an ill-tempered beast. That\'s all. And he\'ll repent it, too! He can\'t do anything to me. It\'s a business quarrel, and I don\'t want you to worry over it."

He was cool and assured, and spoke with the kindly authority of a husband.

"No, Francis!" She shook her head wearily. "That can\'t be all. I must know what it is—I must help you."

"You can\'t help me," he replied calmly. "I have told you enough. They can\'t do anything. I don\'t want to go any further into that business."

"I must know!" she cried.

He was startled at the new force in her voice, the sign of a will erecting itself with its own authority against him.

"Know what? What that fool Pemberton thinks of me? You heard enough of that, I guess."

"Don\'t put me off! Don\'t put me away from you, now, Francis! If we are to love each other, if we are to live together, I must know you, all of you. I am in a fog. There is something wrong all about me, and it gets between us and kills our love. I cannot—bear—it!"

Her voice broke into pleading, and ended in a sob. But controlling herself quickly, she added:—

"Mr. Pemberton is a fair man, a just man. But if he\'s wrong, I want to know that, too. I want to hate him for what he said to you."

"You would like to judge me, to judge your husband!" he retorted coldly. "That is not the way to love. I thought you would believe in me, all through to the end."

"So I shall—if you will tell me all the truth. I would go with you anywhere, to prison if need be, if you would be open with me."

"We needn\'t talk of going to prison yet awhile!" he exclaimed in exasperation.

He went to the sideboard, and pouring himself a glass of whiskey, set the decanter on the table.

"They can\'t do anything but talk," he repeated. Then, warmed by the liquor, he began to be more insolent, to speak defiantly.

"Pemberton\'s been after me from the start. He wanted Wright to get the work in the first place, and he\'s tried to put every obstacle he could in my way. It was first one thing and then another. He has made life unendurable with his prying and his suspicions. But I won\'t stand it another day. I\'m going to Everett to-morrow and tell him that I shall get out if Pemberton is to interfere with my orders. And they can\'t lay a finger on me, I tell you! Pemberton can just talk!"

Helen had put her head between her hands, and she was sobbing. Every hot word that he spoke drove conviction against him into her heart. At last she raised her tear-stained face and cried out with a new access of power:—

"Stop! Stop!"

Then she rose, took the decanter of whiskey, replaced it on the sideboard, and seated herself by his side, putting her hand on his arm.

"Francis, if you care for me, if you want us ever to love each other again, answer me honestly. Have you and that contractor done anything wrong about the school?"

"You can\'t understand," he replied roughly, drawing his arm from her touch. "You are making a great deal out of your own imagination."

"Answer me!" she said, in the same tense tone of pure will. "Have you let that man Graves cheat the trustees,—do anything dishonest,—and shut your eyes to it?"

"Pemberton claims he hasn\'t lived up to the specifications," the architect admitted sullenly.

"And you knew it?"

"So he says."

There was a moment\'s silence between them while the vision of this fraud filled their minds. She seemed to hesitate before the evil thing that she had raised, and then she asked again, quickly:—

"Have you—did you make any money from it?"

He did not reply.

"Tell me, Francis!" she persisted. "Did this man give you anything for letting him—cheat the trustees? Tell me!"

He was cold and careless now. This new will in his wife, unexpected, so totally unlike her gentle, yielding nature, compelled him to reveal some part of the truth. In this last resort her will was the stronger. He said slowly:—

"If he got the school contract, there was an understanding that he was to give me some stock in a corporation. It was involved with other business."

"He was to give you stock?"

"Yes; stock in a hotel that he\'s been building—another piece of work."

"And he gave you this stock?"

"Some of it."

"What have you done with it?"

"Sold it."

"You have sold it?"

"Yes. It was a kind of bonus he gave me for getting him the contract and for doing the plans for the hotel, too."

Further than that admission he would not go, and they left the subject late at night. He was sullen and hard, and resented her new tone of authority to him; fo............