Hasn't it! Oh, David, has it? Was it a courtesy title at the top of the gangway? Good-bye, my wife. Was it a courtesy title, when that deep possessive yearning voice rang in her ears for hours afterwards; teaching her at last what love, marriage, and wifehood might really have meant?

Was it a courtesy title when his first letter arrived, and the words my dear wife came round her in her shame, like strong protective arms?

All this time, had it meant even less to David than she had thought?

Often her punishment had seemed greater than she could bear. Often the branding-iron of vain regret had seared her quivering heart.

But this—this was indeed the cruel pincers of the Roman torture-chamber at her very breasts!

It had been just a courtesy title; and she had hugged it to her, as the one thing which proved that—however little it might ever mean—at least she was more to David than any one else on earth.

On earth! How much longer would he be on earth? David, with his boyish figure, and little short coat. Ah! In the pocket of that coat was a letter for her—one more letter; his farewell. And she was not to receive it until it would be too late to send any answer.

Oh, David, David! Is all this mere accident, or are you deliberately punishing your wife for the slight she put upon your manhood? She did it in ignorance, David. She mounted the platform of her own ignorance, and spoke out of the depths of her absolute inexperience.

Too late to send any answer! Yes; but there was time to answer this one. If she caught to-night's mail, David might yet receive her reply, and learn the truth, before he died.

Pride and Courage stepped away, leaving, unsupported, the escutcheon of the pure true heart.

She took pen and paper and wrote her last letter to David.

*

Even had that letter been sent, so wonderful an outpouring of a woman's pent up love and longing; so desperate a laying bare of her heart's life, could only have been for the eye of the man for whom it was intended. To read it would have been desecration; to print it, sacrilege.

But the letter was not sent. Half way through, Diana suddenly remembered that when it reached David he would be ill and weak; perhaps, actually dying. She must not trouble his last moments, with such an outpouring of grief and remorse; of longing and of loneliness.

And here we see the mother in Diana, coming to the fore in tender thought for David, even in the midst of her own desperate need to tell him all. Nothing must trouble his peace at the last.

The passionate outpouring was flung into a drawer.

Diana took fresh paper, and drew it toward her.