A little later Aldous was startled to hear him say, very clearly and quickly: 

“Do you remember that this is the fifth of October?”

Aldous drew his chair closer, that he might not raise his voice.

“Yes, Ned.”

“Two years, wasn’t it, to-day?  Will you forgive me if I speak of her?”

“You shall say anything you will.”

“Did you notice that piece of news I sent you, in my last letter to Geneva?  But of course you did.  Did it please you?”

“Yes, I was glad of it,” said Aldous, after a pause, “extremely glad.  I thought she had escaped a great danger.”

Hallin studied his face closely.

“She is free, Aldous—­and she is a noble creature—­she has learnt from life—­and from death—­this last two years.  And—­you still love her.  Is it right to make no more effort?”

Aldous saw the perspiration standing on the wasted brow—­would have given the world to be able to content or cheer him—­yet would not, for the world, at such a moment be false to his own feeling or deceive his questioner.

“I think it is right,” he said deliberately, “—­for a good many reasons, Edward.  In the first place I have not the smallest cause—­not the fraction of a cause—­to suppose that I could occupy with her now any other ground than that I occupied two years ago.  She has been kind and friendly to me—­on the whole—­since we met in London.  She has even expressed regret for last year—­meaning, of course, as I understood, for the pain and trouble that may be said to have come from her not knowing her own mind.  She wished that we should be friends.  And”—­he turned his head away—­“no doubt I could be, in time....  But, you see—­in all that, there is nothing whatever to bring me forward again.  My fatal mistake last year, I think now, lay in my accepting what she gave me—­accepting it so readily, so graspingly even.  That was my fault, my blindness, and—­it was as unjust to her—­as it was hopeless for myself.  For hers is a nature”—­his eyes came back to his friend; his voice took a new force and energy—­“which, in love at any rate, will give all or nothing—­and will never be happy itself, or bring happiness, till it gives all.  That is what last year taught me.  So that even if she—­out of kindness or remorse for giving pain—­were willing to renew the old tie—­I should be her worst enemy and my own if I took a single step towards it.  Marriage on such terms as I was thankful for last year, would be humiliation to me, and bring no gain to her.  It will never serve a man with her”—­his voice broke into emotion—­“that he should make no claims!  Let him claim the uttermost far-thing—­her whole self.  If she gives it, then he may know what love means!”

Hallin had listened intently.  At Aldous’s last words his expression showed pain and perplexity.  His mind was full of vague impressions, memories, which seemed to argue with and dispute one of the chief things Aldous had been saying.  But they were not definite enough to be put forward.  His sensitive chivalrous sense, even in this extreme weakness, remembered the tragic weight that attaches inevitably to dying words.  Let him not do more harm than good.