Through all the vicissitudes of her married life, the smallest part of which he only guessed, North had seen much of Evelyn.  There was a daring dangerous recklessness in her mood that he had sensed and understood and to which he had made quick response.  He knew that she was none too happy with Langham, and although he had been conscious of no wish to wrong the husband he had never paused to consider the outcome of his intimacy with the wife.

Evelyn was the first to break the silence.

“You wonder why I came here, don’t you, Jack?” she said.

“You should never have done it!” he replied quickly.

“What about my letters, why didn’t you answer them?” she demanded.  “I hadn’t one word from you in weeks.  It quite spoiled my trip East.  What was I to think?  And then you sent me just a line saying you were leaving Mount Hope—­” she drew in her breath sharply.  There was a brief silence.  “Why?” she asked at length.

“It is better that I should,” he answered awkwardly.

He felt a sudden remorseful tenderness for her; he wished that she might have divined the change that had come over him; even how worthless a thing his devotion had been, the utter selfishness of it.

“Why is it better?” she asked.  He was near enough for her to put out a small hand and rest it on his arm.  “Jack, have I done anything to make you hate me?  Don’t you care any longer for me?”

“I care a great deal, Evelyn.  I want you to think the best of me.”

“But why do you go?  And when do you think of going, Jack?” The hand that she had rested there a moment before, left his arm and dropped at her side.

“I don’t know yet, my plans are very uncertain.  I am quite at the end of my money.  I have been a good deal of a fool, Evelyn.”

Something in his manner restrained her, she was not so sure as she had been of her hold on him.  She looked up appealingly into his face, the smile had left her lips and her eyes were sad, but he mistrusted the genuineness of this swift change of mood, certainly its permanence.

“What will there be left for me, Jack, when you go?  I thought—­I thought—­” her full lips quivered.

She was realizing that this separation which her imagination had already invested with a tragic significance, meant much less to him than she believed it would mean to her; more than this, the cruel suspicion was certifying itself that in her absence from Mount Hope, North had undergone some strange transformation; was no longer the reckless, dissipated, young fellow who for months had been as her very shadow.

“I am going to-night, Evelyn,” he said with sudden determination.

She gave a half smothered cry.

“To-night!  To-night!” she repeated.

He changed his position uncomfortably.

“I am at the end of my string, Evelyn,” he said slowly.

“I—­I shall miss you dreadfully, Jack!  You know I am frightfully unhappy; what will it be when you go?  Marsh has made a perfect wreck of my life!”