“Mildred, you should not ask me such painful questions; it is not right of you.”

“It is right; and you will soon know that it is.  Answer me.”

“Then, if you must have it, I do.”

Her face became quite hard.  Slowly she took her hands from his shoulders.

“And you have the effrontery to ask me to marry you with one breath, and to tell me this with the next.  Arthur, you had better go.  Do not consider yourself under any false obligation to me.  Go, and go quickly.”

“For God’s sake, think what you are doing, Mildred!”

“Oh!  I have thought—­I have thought too much.  There is nothing left but to say good-bye.  Yes, it is a very cruel word.  Do you know that you have passed over my life like a hurricane, and wrenched it up by the roots?”

“Really, Mildred, you mystify me.  I don’t understand you.  What can be the meaning of all this?”

She looked at him for a few seconds, and then answered, in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice.

“I forgot, Arthur; here are your English letters;” and she drew them from her bosom and gave them to him.  “Perhaps they will explain things a little.  Meanwhile, I will tell you something.  Angela Caresfoot’s husband is dead; indeed, she was never really married to him.”  And then she turned, and slowly walked towards the entrance of the museum.  In the boudoir, however, her strength seemed to fail her, and she sank on a chair.

Arthur took the letter, written by the woman he loved, and warm from the breast of the woman he was about to leave, and stood speechless.  His heart stopped for a moment, and then sent the blood bounding through his veins like a flood of joy.  The shock was so great that for a second or two he staggered, and nearly fell.  Presently, however, he recovered himself, and another and very different thought overtook him.

Putting the letters into his pocket, he followed Mildred into the boudoir.  She was sitting, looking very faint, upon a chair, her arms hanging down helplessly by her side.

“Mildred,” he said, hoarsely.

She looked up with a faint air of surprise.

“What, are you not gone?”

“Mildred, beyond what you have just said I know nothing of the contents of these letters; but whatever they may be, here and now, before I read them, I again offer to marry you.  I owe it to you and to my own sense of what is right that I should marry you.”

He spoke calmly, and with evident sincerity.

“Do you know that I read your letter just now, and had half a mind to burn it; that I am little better than a thief?”

“I guessed that you had read it.”

“And do you understand that your Angela is unmarried, that she was never really married at all—­and that she asks nothing better than to marry you?”

“I understand.”

“And you still offer to make me your wife?”

“I do.  What do you say?”