“If it isn’t too late.”

“Oh, I dare say it will be.  Everything seems to be—­too late.”

“It’s better that some things should come too late rather than not at all.”

“What things do you mean?”

“I suppose I mean the same things as you do.”  He gave a long sigh that was something of a groan, slipping down in his chair into an attitude, not of informality, but of dejection.  For the moment neither was equal to facing the great subjects that must be met.

“I wonder what Bienville will do to himself?” he asked, suddenly, changing his position with nervous brusqueness, leaning forward now, with his elbows on his knees.  “I wish you’d go and see him to-night.”  “Well, perhaps I will.  I’ve a good deal of fellow-feeling with him.  I can’t help thinking that he and I are in much the same box, and that he has shown me the way Out.”

“Derek!”

She sprang up with a cry of alarm, standing, with hands crossed on her breast, in a sudden access of terror.

“Oh, don’t be afraid,” he laughed, grimly, staring up at her.  “I’m not his sort.  There are no heroics about me.  Men of my stamp don’t make theatrical exits; we’re too confoundedly sane.  Whether we do well or whether we do ill, we plod along on our treadmill round, from the house to the office, and from the office to the grave, as if we never had anything on the conscience.  But if I had the spirit of Bienville, do you know what I should do?”

“No, no, no!” she burst out.  “Don’t say it!  Don’t say it!”

“Then I won’t.  But if Bienville thought of it, why shouldn’t I?  What has he done that is worse than what I’ve done?  What has he done that’s as bad?  For, after all, you were little or nothing to him, when you were everything to me.  I knew you as he didn’t know you.  I had lived in one house with you, watched you, studied you, tried you, put you to tests that you never knew anything about, and had seen you come through them successfully.  I had seen how you bore misfortune; I had seen how you carried yourself in difficult situations; I had seen the skill with which you ruled my house, and the wisdom with which you were more than a mother to my child; I had seen you combine with all that is most womanly the patience and fortitude of a man; and it wasn’t enough for me—­it wasn’t enough for me!”

He threw himself back into his seat, with a desperate flinging out of the hands, letting his arms drop heavily over the sides of his chair till his fingers touched the floor.

“My God!  My God!” he groaned, ironically.  “It wasn’t enough for me!  I doubted her.  I doubted her on the first idle word that came my way.  I did more than doubt her.  I haled her into my court, and tried her, and condemned her, and, as nearly as might be, put her to death.  I, with my ten hundred thousand sins—­all of them as black as Erebus—­found her not pure enough for me!  It ought to make one die of laughter.  Diane,” he went on, in another tone—­a tone of ghastly jocularity—­“didn’t it amuse you, knowing yourself to be what you are—­knowing what you had done for Mrs. Eveleth—­knowing the things Bienville has just said of you—­didn’t it amuse you to see me sitting in judgment on you?”