David? When he is older, you will have to take him home and educate him, but now — now — he is all I have of you. Soon the terrible ocean will be between us again.

“It will be just the same in your home now as if I had never come. I did not say I was your wife — for you had not — and I would not tell them. I want you to know this, so nothing will be changed by me. In London, before I knew, when I thought you were there, when I did not understand, I wrote my name in the hotel book, but in Queensderry something in my heart stopped me and I only wrote my old name, Cassandra Merlin. I must have been beginning to understand.”

David paused and dashed the tears from his eyes. “Poor little heart! Poor little heart!” he cried. He paced the room, then