“I do believe you,” he said slowly, but with downcast eyes, “and if I did not love you before you told me this I could love you now for the part you have taken; but”—­He stopped.

“You love her still,” she burst out, “and I might have known it.  Perhaps,” she went on distractedly, “you love her the more that you have lost her.  It is the way of men—­and women.”

“If I had loved her truly,” said Barker, lifting his frank eyes to hers, “I could not have touched your lips.  I could not even have wished to—­as I did three years ago—­as I did last night.  Then I feared it was my weakness, now I know it was my love.  I have thought of it ever since, even while waiting my wife’s return here, knowing that I did not and never could have loved her.  But for that very reason I must try to save her for her own sake, if I cannot save her for mine; and if I fail, dearest, it shall not be said that we climbed to happiness over her back bent with the burden of her shame.  If I loved you and told you so, thinking her still guiltless and innocent, how could I profit now by her fault?”

Mrs. Horncastle saw too late her mistake.  “Then you would take her back?” she said frenziedly.

“To my home—­which is hers—­yes.  To my heart—­no.  She never was there.”

“And I,” said Mrs. Horncastle, with a quivering lip,—­“where do I go when you have settled this?  Back to my past again?  Back to my husbandless, childless life?”

She was turning away, but Barker caught her in his arms again.  “No!” he said, his whole face suddenly radiating with hope and youthful enthusiasm.  “No!  Kitty will help us; we will tell her all.  You do not know her, dearest, as I do—­how good and kind she is, in spite of all.  We will appeal to her; she will devise some means by which, without the scandal of a divorce, she and I may be separated.  She will take dear little Sta with her—­it is only right, poor girl; but she will let me come and see him.  She will be a sister to us, dearest.  Courage!  All will come right yet.  Trust to me.”

An hysterical laugh came to Mrs. Horncastle’s lips and then stopped.  For as she looked up at him in his supreme hopefulness, his divine confidence in himself and others—­at his handsome face beaming with love and happiness, and his clear gray eyes glittering with an almost spiritual prescience—­she, woman of the world and bitter experience, and perfectly cognizant of her own and Kitty’s possibilities, was, nevertheless, completely carried away by her lover’s optimism.  For of all optimism that of love is the most convincing.  Dear boy!—­for he was but a boy in experience—­only his love for her could work this magic.  So she gave him kiss for kiss, largely believing, largely hoping, that Mrs. Barker was in love with Van Loo and would not return.  And in this hope an invincible belief in the folly of her own sex soothed and sustained her.