“I would have come.  I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t you?  Oh, well—­we had a fire here, and I was burnt; that’s all.  How funny you not knowing, though.  It was in all the papers—­’Heroic conduct of a lady.’  Aren’t they silly, those people that write papers.  I wasn’t heroic a bit.”

“I—­I never saw it.  I was in Paris.”

“In Paris?  Ah, I love Paris!  That’s where I went for my honeymoon.  Was that where you were ill?”

“Yes.”

“Poor Louis!  And I was so happy there.”

Poor Louis!—­she had loved Nevill in him and he was still a part of Nevill.  And for the rest, she who understood so much, who was she to judge him?

He looked at her.  By this time his sensations had lost the sting of pity and horror.  He could look without flinching.  The fire had only burnt the lower frame-work of the face, leaving the features untouched; the eyes still glowed under their scorched brows with a look half-tender, half-triumphant.

It was as if they said, “See what it was you loved so much.”

The little fool, tortured into wisdom, was that what she meant?  It was always hard to fathom her meanings.  Could it be that?

Yes, it must be.  She had sent for him, not because she wanted to see him, but because she wanted him to see her.  She had sent for him to save him.  The sight of her face had killed her husband’s love; she had supposed that it would do the same kind office for his.  Would any other woman have thought of it?  It was preposterous, of course; but it would not have been Mrs. Nevill Tyson’s idea without some touch of divine absurdity.

But—­could any other woman have done it?  “See what it was you loved so much.”  Poor little fool!

And he saw.  This was not Mrs. Nevill Tyson, but it was the woman that he had loved.  Her being Mrs. Nevill Tyson was an accident; it had nothing to do with her.  Her beauty too?  It was gone.  So was something that had obscured his judgment of her.  He had doubted her over and over again, unwillingly at first, willfully at the end; but he knew now that if for one instant she had justified his skepticism he would have ceased to love her.  It was the paradox of her purity, dimly discerned under all his doubt, that had tormented and fascinated him; and she held him by it still.

His fingers worked nervously, plaiting and unplaiting the fringe.

“You were burnt.  Where was Nevill then?”

“He was here.”

“Was he burnt?”

“No; but he might have been.  He—­he helped to put the fire out.  Oh, Louis, it’s horribly hard on him!”

Stanistreet clenched his teeth lest he should blaspheme.

“How long have you known Nevill?” she asked, as if she had read his thoughts.

“I don’t know.  A long time—­”

“How many years?  Think.”

“Fifteen perhaps.  We were at Marlborough together in seventy-eight.”