Meanwhile Malcourt and Miss Suydam were walking cautiously forward again, selecting every footstep as though treading on the crumbling edges of an abyss.

“It’s rather stupid that I never suspected it,” she said, musing aloud.

“Suspected what?”

“The existence of this other woman called Virginia Suydam.  And I might have been mercifully ignorant of her until I died, if you had not looked at me and seen us both at once.”

“We all are that way.”

“Not all women, Louis.  Have you found them so?  You need not answer.  There is in you, sometimes, a flash of infernal chivalry; do you know it?  I can forgive you a great deal for it; even for discovering that other and not very staid person, so easily schooled, easily taught to respond; so easily thrilled, easily beguiled, easily caressed.  Why, with her head falling back on your shoulder so readily, and her lips so lightly persuaded, one can scarcely believe her to have been untaught through all these years of dry convention and routine, or unaware of that depravity, latent, which it took your unerring faith and skill to discover and develop.”

“How far have I developed it?”

She bent her delicate head:  “I believe I have already admitted your moderation.”

He shivered, walking forward without looking at her for a pace or two, then halted.

“Would you marry me?” he asked.

“I had rather not.  You know it.”

“Why?—­once again.”

“Because of my strange respect for that other woman that I am—­or was.”

“Which always makes me regret my—­moderation,” he said, wincing under the lash of her words.  “But I’m not considering you!  I’m considering the peace of mind of that other woman—­not yours!” He took her in his arms, none too gently.  “Not yours.  I’d show no mercy to you\ There is only one kind of mercy you’d understand.  Look into my eyes and admit it.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But your other self understands!”

“Why don’t you destroy her?”

“And let her die in her contempt for me?  You ask too much—­Virginia-that-I-know.  If that other Virginia-that-I-don’t-know loved me, I’d kill this one, not the other!”

“Do you care for that one, Louis?”

“What answer shall I make?”

“The best you can without lying.”

“Then”—­and being in his arms their eyes were close—­“then I think I could love her if I had a chance.  I don’t know.  I can deny myself.  They say that is the beginning.  But I seldom do—­very seldom.  And that is the best answer I can give, and the truest.”

“Thank you....  And so you are going to leave me?”

“I am going North.  Yes.”

“What am I to do?”

“Return to your other self and forget me.”

“Thank you again....  Do you know, Louis, that you have never once by hint or by look or by silence suggested that it was I who deliberately offered you the first provocation?  That is another flicker of that infernal chivalry of yours.”