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 pend it elsewhere. He had long been restive under her continued use of the weapon of polite negativity with which he had originally defended himself against her impulsiveness. Now he longed to recapture the sources of the old impulsiveness, to defend them as his rarest possession, and his longing was redoubled by a fear that it was too late.

"Why" he commenced, but his voice broke and he reached out his arms. It was dark. She was dazed, and seemed to ward him off.

"Then what made you do it?" he finally contrived to say. "You've saved the day, if it can be saved. Not that it really matters. Why? Why? Why not have let me blunder along to defeat, like the silly ass I am?"

"No woman likes to see her husband beaten," she replied, in tired, tearful tones, "by a barber!" she added.

"Louise!" he implored, in a welter of hopes, fears, and longings that made him for once brutally incautious. He caught her into his arms, then marvelled at the limpness of her body. He turned her face to the dim light, and saw that she had fainted.

Not until Dare had been driven to Witney, there to entrain for the coast, did Louise give in to the weariness with which she had been contending for many days prior to Keble's election. Only her determination to spare Dare the knowledge that she had