But the promise had been broken.  Through me she had known pain, suffering, danger, inability to work, anxiety, daily care for months and months alone.  The exquisite, perfect form I had counted so sacred, had suffered the common earthly lot.  And through me.  My thoughts seemed crushing me, grinding me beneath them, but at last her voice penetrated to my brain, through its anguish of self-reproach.

“I knew you would feel it so much, dear Trevor, that was why I kept it secret from you and went away, but now it is all over and past, you must not dwell on it.  It is irrevocable.  Don’t reproach yourself about it.  Let us be glad we are in Heaven now.”

I rose and went over to her and knelt by the couch, raising one of her hands to my lips and holding it against me.

“Dear!  Dearest one!  You went away to endure all that misery alone, so that it should not distress me?  How wonderfully unselfish you have always been to me!”

“Oh, no,” she answered quickly, a light colour rising all over her face.

“You must not think that.  I went away for myself, too.  I could not bear that you should see me disfigured, spoiled, as you would think.  I had always been the ideal to you.  I could not bear to let you see me as an ordinary woman.  I was afraid I should lose your passion for me, which I value more than anything else in the world.  I felt I could face everything but that.  Terrifying and horrible as it all was to meet quite alone, still it was better than feeling I was losing your love and desire.”

“But you would not have done,” I said vehemently; “nothing could make any difference to my love for you.”

“Not to your love, perhaps, but our passions are not in our own control.  They rise under certain influences, sink and decline under others, and we can do nothing.  We must look these things in the face.  See now, if I were suddenly turned to an old, old woman, withered before your eyes, would you feel as you feel now?”

“No,” I answered slowly, “I admit old age....”

“Or hopelessly disfigured—­my face rendered hideous by burns or loathsome with disease?  You could not desire me then, I should not expect it.  Love is unchangeable, but passion is a flame that shivers in every transient breeze.  We can’t help it.  It is so.  As I look at you now I love you for your strength and grace, above all for your beautiful form.  If you hobbled into the room, bent and lame, I should love you still but not as I do now, quite, quite otherwise.  And I was disfigured, temporarily, I know, but it went on for months and months.  I was no longer your gay, glad spirit with the radiant wings.  I was broken, distorted, hideous.”

“Don’t tell me,” I muttered; “I can’t bear it.”  She put one arm round my neck and her soft lips on my hair.

“It is over,” she whispered.  “Do not be sorry, do not reproach yourself.  It was so much better for you not to know, not to see it.  It would all have preyed upon you so from day to day. I felt the long waiting.  It seemed the time would never pass, and each day and night I felt so glad to know you were not there, to suffer with me, but away, quite out of reach of it all.”