“You said Phebe was the better worth loving of the two,” said Mrs. Whittridge, coming to walk up and down the room with him and clasping her hands over his arm.  “I used to think,—­I fancied you cared for the child,—­that you would care for her.”

Denham stood still and faced his sister very gravely, “I was growing to care for her, Soeur Angelique,” he said.  “I believe I would have loved her if,—­if Gerald Vernor had not come here when she did.”

“Oh, Denham!”

“Yes, Soeur Angelique.  It is a humiliating confession, is it not, that one has wilfully thrown away something that perhaps one might have had, for something that one knows one can never have?  It is sheerest folly.  And to do it with one’s eyes open is the maddest folly of all.  Gerald Vernor is as indifferent to me as it is possible for one human creature to be to another.  I hold no more place in her thoughts than had I never existed.  And yet, Soeur Angelique, I am fool enough,—­or helpless enough,—­whichever you please, to love her.  I love her not for what she is to me, but for what she is in herself, for what she really is, rather than for what she seems,—­for the strength and the heroism of her heart, which I see through all the glaring, commonplace faults, which she is at no pains to hide.  Or perhaps I only love her because it was meant that I should.  Be it as it may, I do love her, and as passionately, as entirely, and as hopelessly as it is possible for man to love.”

“O Denham, Denham, my boy!”

Denham laid his hand lightly on his sister’s lips.  “Now we have had a sufficiency of heroics for once, indeed for always,” he said, with a wholly altered voice.  “Life has enough of solemnity in it and in spare, without our adding aught to it.  We will not speak of this again, if you please.  Folly is always best forgotten.  But Soeur Angelique, if you imagine me to be a blighted being, if you think I walk the floor in the dead of night, tearing my hair and calling on all the stars to witness the unearthly gloom in my racked bosom, you are utterly mistaken.  I do nothing of the kind.  I am not blighted at all.  My damask cheek is not going to be preyed upon, nor shall I take to an excess of tobacco and poetry.  I have made a mistake, but I mean to sing over it,—­not weep over it,—­and to become a stronger and better man, if possible, for having been so weak a one.”

“And Phebe?” said Soeur Angelique.  Great tears stood in her eyes.  “I hoped—­”

Denham placed both hands on his sister’s shoulders.  “Soeur Angelique, you must bury those hopes in the grave.  Loving Gerald Vernor, never, now, or in the future, shall I have one word of love for any other woman.  But for her, I should have come perhaps to love Phebe with this same love; perhaps,—­who knows?—­Phebe might so have loved me.  As it is—­Soeur Angelique you know what I am.  You know if I am likely to deceive myself.  Gerald Vernor has changed my life for always.  What might have been, now can never be.”