His arms were suddenly around her.  She shrank back in her chair.  Her terrified eyes invited and yet reproached him.

“Remember—­oh, please remember!” she cried.

“What can I remember except one thing?” he whispered.

She held him away from her.

“You talk as though everything were possible between us.  How can that be?  I have no joy in my husband, nor he in me—­but I am married.  We are not in America.”

He rose to his feet, a strong man trembling in every limb.  He stood before her, trying to talk reasonably, trying to plead his cause behind the shelter of reasonable words.

“Let me tell you,” he began, “why our divorce laws are so different from yours.  We believe that the worst breach of the Seventh Commandment is the sin of an unloving kiss, the unwillingly given arms of a shuddering wife, striving to keep the canons of the prayer book and besmirching thereby her life with evil.  We believe, on the other hand, that there is no sin in love.”

“If you and I were alone in the world!”

“If you are thinking of your friends,” he pleaded, “they are more likely to be proud of the woman who had the courage to break away from a debasing union.  Every one realises—­what your husband is.  He has been unfaithful not only to you but to every friend he has ever had.”

“Do I not know it!” she moaned.  “Isn’t the pain of it there in my heart, hour by hour!”

His reasonableness was deserting him.  Again he was the lover, begging for his rights.

“Wipe him out of your mind, sweetheart,” he begged.  “I’ll buy you from him, if you like, or fight him for you, or steal you—­I don’t care which.  Anything sooner than let you go.”

“I don’t want to go,” she confessed, afraid of her own words, shivering with the meaning of them.

“You never shall,” he continued, his voice gaining strength with his rising hopes.  “You’ve opened my lips and you must hear what is in my heart.  You are the one love of my life.  My hours and days are empty, I want you always by my side.”

The love of him swept her away.  Her head had fallen back, she saw his face through the mist.

“Go on, go on,” she begged.

“I want you as I have wanted nothing else in life—­not only for my own sake, for yours.  I want to chase all those lines of sorrow away from your face.”

“My poor, tired face,” she faltered.

“Tired?” he repeated.  “It’s the most beautiful face on earth.”

The smile which suddenly transformed her quivering mouth made it indeed seem so.

“You are so foolish, dear, but go on,” she pleaded.

“I want to see you grow younger and lighter-hearted.  I want you to realise day by day that something beautiful is stealing into your life.  I want you to feel what real love is—­tender, passionate, lover’s love.”

“My dear, my dear!” she cried.  “I do not dare to think of these things, yet they sound so wonderful.”