Yes, dearest"-- and the grimness of her dreariness suddenly once more possessed her: "you've only to tell me that that knowledge was my reason for what I did.

How, when you do, can I stand up to you?
You see," she said with an ineffable headshake, "that I don't stand up! I'm down, down, down," she declared; "yet" she as quickly added--"there's just one little thing that helps to save my life." And she kept him waiting but an instant.

"They might easily--they would perhaps even certainly--have done something worse." He thought.

"Worse than that Charlotte-- ?" "Ah, don't tell me," she cried, "that there COULD have been nothing worse.

There might, as they were, have been many things.