The Shield of Silence. Harriet T. Comstock

to—and let him blot out this ache for Merry." But that was not to be.

      And Meredith wrote her letters to her sister and smiled upon her husband—for after the third month of her marriage that was the best she could do for either of them. All the ideals of her self-blinded life were being swept away in the glaring flame of reality.

      Thornton was still infatuated and went to great lengths to prove to his pale, starry-eyed wife her power over him. He was delighted at the impression she made upon the rather hectic but exclusive circle in which he moved; but he dreaded, vaguely to be sure, her hearing, in a gross way, references to his life before she entered it. So quite frankly and a bit sketchily he confided it to her himself.

      "Of course that is ended forever," he said; "you have led me from darkness to light, you wonderful child! Why, Merry, you simply have made a new and better man of me—I understand the real value of things now."

      But did he?

      Merry was looking at him as if she were doubting her senses. Things she had heard in her girlhood, things that floated about in the dark corners of her memory, were pressing close. Dreadful things that had been forced upon her against her will but which she reasoned could never happen to her, or to any of her own.

      "You mean," she faltered gropingly at last, "that another woman has——" She could not voice the ugly words and Thornton was obliged to be a little more explicit.

      Then he saw his wife retreat—spiritually. He hastened after her as best he could.

      "You see, darling," he was frightened, "out here, where a fellow is cut off from home ties and all that, the old code does not hold—how could it? I'm no exception. Why, good Lord! child——" but Meredith was not listening. He saw that and it angered him.

      She was hearing words spoken long ago—oh! years and years ago it seemed. Words that had lured her from Doris, from safety, from all the dangerous peace that had been hers.

      "Sweetheart," that voice had said, "there is one right woman for every man, but few there be who find her. When one does—then there is no time to be lost. Life is all too short at the best for them. Come, my beloved, come!"

      And she had heeded and, forsaking all else, had trusted him.

      According to his lights Thornton had sincerely meant those words when he spoke them. He was under the spell, still, as he looked at the small frozen thing before him now.

      If he could win her from her absurd, and almost unbelievable, position; if he could, through her love and his, gain her absolutely; make her his—what a conquest!

      "My precious one, I am yours to do with what you will!" he was saying with all the fervour of his being; but Meredith looked at him from a great distance.

      "You were never mine!" was what she said. Then asked:

      "Is that—that woman here? Will I ever—meet her?"

      Thornton was growing furiously angry.

      "Certainly not!" he replied to her last question, incensed at the implied lack of delicacy on his part. Then he added, "Don't be a fool, Merry!"

      "No, I won't," she whispered, grimly. "I won't be a fool, whatever else I am. Do you want me to leave you at once, or stay on?"

      Thornton stared at her blankly.

      "Good God!" he muttered; "what do you mean, stay on?"

      "I mean that if I stay it will be because I don't want to hurt you more than I must—and because things don't matter much, either way. I have my own money—but, well, I'll stay on if it will help you in your business."

      Then light dawned.

      "You will stay on!" Thornton snapped the words out. "You are my wife, and you will stay on!"

      "Very well. I will stay," Meredith turned and walked away.

      Thornton looked after her and his face softened. Something in him was touched by the spirit under the cold, crude exterior of the girl. It was worth while—he would try to win her!

      And that was the best hour in Thornton's life.

      Could he have held to it all might have gone well, but Thornton's successes had been due to dash and daring—the slow, patient method was not his, and against his wife's stern indifference he recoiled after a short time—she bored him; she no longer seemed worth while; not worth the struggle nor the holding to absurd and rigid demands. Still, by her smiling acquiescence, Meredith made things possible that otherwise might not have been so, and she was a charming hostess when occasion demanded.

      During the second bleak year of their marriage Meredith accompanied Thornton to England—he was often obliged to go there on prolonged business—but she never repeated the experiment.

      While it was comparatively easy to play her difficult rôle in her home, it was unbearable among her husband's people, who complicated matters by assuming that she must, of necessity, be honoured and uplifted by the alliance she had made.

      After the return from England Thornton abandoned his puritanical life and returned to the easy ways of his bachelor days.

      Meredith knew perfectly well what was going on, but she had her own income and lived her own detached and barren life, so she clung to what seemed to her the last shred of duty she owed to her marriage ties—she served in her husband's home as hostess, and by her mere presence she avoided betraying him to the scorn of those who could not know all, and so might not judge justly.

      Then the crisis came that shocked Meredith into consciousness and forced her to act, for the first time in her life, independently.

      Thornton was about to go, again, to England. The day before he sailed he came into his wife's sitting room, where she lay upon a couch, suffering from a severe headache.

      She never mentioned her pain or loneliness, and to Thornton's careless glance she appeared as she always did—pale, cold, and self-centred.

      "Well, I sail at noon to-morrow!" he said, seating himself astride a chair, folding his arms and settling his chin on them.

      "Yes? Is there anything particular that you want me to look after in your absence?"

      Meredith barely raised her eyes. Her pain was intense, but Thornton saw only indifference and an unconscious insolence in the words, tone, and languid glance.

      Never before in his life had he been balked and defied and resented as he was by the pretty creature before him. The devil rose in him—and generally Thornton rode his devil with courage and control, but suddenly it reared, and he was thrown!

      "Do you know," he said—and he looked handsome and powerful in his white clothes; he was splendidly correct in every detail—"there are times when I think you forget that you are my wife."

      "I try to." Like all quiet people Meredith could shatter one's poise at times by her daring. She looked so small and defiant as she lay there—so secure!

      "Suppose I commanded you to come with me to-morrow? Made my rightful demand after this hellish year—what would you do?"

      Thornton's chin projected; his mouth smiled, not pleasantly, and his eyes held Meredith's with a light that frightened her. She sat up.

      "Of course I should refuse to go with you," she replied, "and I do not acknowledge any rights of yours except those that I give you. You apparently overlook the fact that—I make no claims."

      "Claims?" Thornton laughed, and the sound had a dangerous note that startled Meredith. "Claims? Good Lord! That's quaintly delicious. You don't know men, my dear. It would be a deed of charity to—inform you. Claims, indeed! You drove me, when you might have held me, and you talk claims."

      "I did not want to hold you—after I knew that you had never really been mine." Meredith's words were shaken by an emotion beyond Thornton's comprehension; they further aroused the brute in him.

      "This