George shook his head but did not speak.  They walked an echoing block or two in silence.

“George, I need my wife,” Warren said then.  “There isn’t an hour of my life that some phase of our life together doesn’t come back to me and wring my heart.  I don’t want anything else—­our sons, our fireside, our interests together.  I’ve heard her voice ever since.  And I’m changed, George, not in what I always believed, because I know right from wrong, and always have, but I don’t believe in myself any more.  I want my kids to be taught laws—­not their own laws.  I want to go on my knees to my girl—–­”

His voice thickened suddenly, and they walked on with no attempt on either side to end the silence for a long time.  The city streets were wet from a rain, but day was breaking in hopeful pearl and rose.

“I can say this,” said George at last:  “I believe that she needs you as much as you do her.  But Rachael’s proud—­”

“Ah, yes, she’s that!” Warren said eagerly as he paused.

“And Warren, she has been dragged through the muck during the last few years,” George resumed in a mildly expostulatory tone.

“Oh, I know it!” Warren answered, stricken.

“She hates coarseness,” pursued George, “she hates weakness.  I believe that if ever a divorce was justified in this world, hers was.  But to have you come back at her, to have Magsie Clay break in on her, and begin to yap breezily about divorce, and how prevalent it is, and what a solution it is, why, of course it was enough to break her heart!”

“Don’t!” Warren said thickly, quickening his pace, as if to walk away from his own insufferable thoughts.

For many days they did not speak of Rachael again; indeed George felt that there was nothing further to say.  He feared in his own heart that nothing would ever bring about a change in her feeling, or rather, that the change that had been taking place in her for so many weeks was one that would be lasting, that Rachael was an altered woman.

Alice believed this, too, and Rachael believed it most of all.  Indeed, over Rachael’s torn and shaken spirit there had fallen of late a peace and a sense of security that she had never before known in her life.  She tried not to think of Warren any more, or at least to think of him as he had been in the happy days when they had been all in all to each other.  If other thoughts would creep in, and her heart grow hot and bitter within her at the memory of her wrongs, she resolutely fought for composure; no matter now what he had been or done, that life was dead.  She had her boys, the sunsets and sunrises, the mellowing beauty of the year.  She had her books, and above all her memories.  And in these memories she found much to blame in herself, but much to pity, too.  A rudderless little bark, she had been set adrift in so inviting, so welcoming a sea twenty years ago!  She had known that she was beautiful, and that she must marry—­what else?  What more serious thought ever flitted through the brain of little Rachael Fairfax than that it was a delicious adventure to face life in a rough blue coat and feathered hat, and steer her wild little sails straight into the heart of the great waters?