links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, as he believed,
that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very nature of the
plea for his faithless friend constituted a prohibition; that it
happened to have come from HER was precisely the vice that attached
to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he felt sure he would
have listened; he would have deferred to an advocate who, speaking
from abstract justice, knowing of his denial without having known
Hague, should have had the imagination to say: "Ah, remember only
the best of him; pity him; provide for him." To provide for him on
the very ground of having discovered another of his turpitudes was
not to pity but to glorify him. The more Stransom thought the more
he made out that whatever this relation of Hague's it could only
have been a deception more or less finely practised. Where had it
come into the life that all men saw? Why had one never heard of it
if it had had the frankness of honourable things? Stransom knew
enough of his other ties, of his obligations and appearances, not
to say enough of his general character, to be sure there had been
some infamy. In one way or another this creature had been coldly
sacrificed. That was why at the last as well as the first he must
still leave him out and out.



CHAPTER IX.



And yet this was no solution, especially after he had talked again
to his friend of all it had been his plan she should finally do for
him. He had talked in the other days, and she had responded with a