I cannot let Michael suffer for me, even to save my reputation." _Her reputation!_ How little she had cared for it twenty-four hours ago, when passion clutched the reins! But now---- The public shame of it--the divorce which in her eyes must ensue--Andrea! Her courteous, sedate, inexorable husband, whose will she could not bend, whom she could not cajole, whose mind was a closed book to her; a book which had lain by her hand for three years, which she had never had the curiosity to open!--Fay feared her husband, as we all fear what we do not understand.

He would divorce her--and then---- And Magdalen at home--and---- A flood of suffocating emotion swept over her, full of ugly swimming and crawling reptiles, and invertebrate horrors, the inevitable scavengers of the sea of selfish passion.
Fay shrank back for very life.

She could not pass through that flood and live.

Nevertheless she felt herself pushed towards it.
"But I have no choice.

I _must_ speak.