Delafield, in truth, was some two or three years younger than Warkworth.  But the sudden impression on Julie’s mind, as she saw him thus, was of a man worn and prematurely aged—­markedly older and graver, even, since their marriage, since that memorable evening by the side of Como when, by that moral power of which he seemed often to be the mere channel and organ, he had overcome her own will and linked her life with his.

She looked at him in a kind of terror.  Why was he so pale—­an embodied grief?  Warkworth’s death was not a mortal stroke for him.

He came closer, and still Julie’s eyes held him.  Was it her fault, this—­this shadowed countenance, these suggestions of a dumb strain and conflict, which not even his strong youth could bear without betrayal?  Her heart cried out, first in a tragic impatience; then it melted within her strangely, she knew not how.

She sat up in bed and held out her hands.  He thought of that evening in Heribert Street, after Warkworth had left her, when she had been so sad and yet so docile.  The same yearning, the same piteous agitation was in her attitude now.

He knelt down beside the bed and put his arms round her.  She clasped her hands about his neck and hid her face on his shoulder.  There ran through her the first long shudder of weeping.

“He was so young!” he heard her say through sobs.  “So young!”

He raised his hand and touched her hair tenderly.

“He died serving his country,” he said, commanding his voice with difficulty.  “And you grieve for him like this!  I can’t pity him so much.”

“You thought ill of him—­I know you did.”  She spoke between deep, sobbing breaths.  “But he wasn’t—­he wasn’t a bad man.”

She fell back on her pillow and the tears rained down her cheeks.

Delafield kissed her hand in silence.

“Some day—­I’ll tell you,” she said, brokenly.

“Yes, you shall tell me.  It would help us both.”

“I’ll prove to you he wasn’t vile.  When—­when he proposed that to me he was distracted.  So was I. How could he break off his engagement?  Now you see how she loved him.  But we couldn’t part—­we couldn’t say good-bye.  It had all come on us unawares.  We wanted to belong to each other—­just for two days—­and then part forever.  Oh, I’ll tell you—­”

“You shall tell me all—­here!” he said, firmly, crushing her delicate hands in his own against his breast, so that she felt the beating of his heart.

“Give me my hand.  I’ll show you his letter—­his last letter to me.”  And, trembling, she drew from under her pillow that last scrawled letter, written from the squalid hotel near the Gare de Sceaux.

No sooner, however, had she placed it in Delafield’s hands than she was conscious of new forces of feeling in herself which robbed the act of its simplicity.  She had meant to plead her lover’s cause and her own with the friend who was nominally her husband.  Her action had been a cry for sympathy, as from one soul to another.