“You have nothing to give her but stolen goods,” said the shadow of Martin.  “You have nothing to give anyone personally any more....

“Think of the love that she desires and think of this love that you can give....

“Is there any new thing in you that you can give her that you haven’t given me?  You and I know each other very well; perhaps I know you too well.  Haven’t you loved me as much as you can love anyone?  Think of all that there has been between us that you are ready now, eager now to set aside and forget as though it had never been.  For four days you have kept me out of your mind in order to worship her.  Yet you have known I was there—­for all you would not know.  No one else will ever be so intimate with you as I am.  We have quarrelled together, wept together, jested happily and jested bitterly.  You have spared me not at all.  Pitiless and cruel you have been to me.  You have reckoned up all my faults against me as though they were sins.  You have treated me at times unlovingly—­never was lover treated so unlovingly as you have sometimes treated me.  And yet I have your love—­as no other woman can ever have it.  Even now when you are wildly in love with this girl’s freshness and boldness and cleverness I come into your mind by right and necessity.”

“She is different,” argued Sir Richmond.

“But you are the same,” said the shadow of Martin with Martin’s unsparing return.  “Your love has never been a steadfast thing.  It comes and goes like the wind.  You are an extravagantly imperfect lover.  But I have learnt to accept you, as people accept the English weather....  Never in all your life have you loved, wholly, fully, steadfastly—­as people deserve to be loved—­not your mother nor your father, not your wife nor your children, nor me, nor our child, nor any living thing.  Pleasant to all of us at times—­at times bitterly disappointing.  You do not even love this work of yours steadfastly, this work to which you sacrifice us all in turn.  You do not love enough.  That is why you have these moods and changes, that is why you have these lassitudes.  So it is you are made....

“And that is why you must not take this brave young life, so much simpler and braver than your own, and exalt it—­as you can do—­and then fail it, as you will do....”

Sir Richmond’s mind and body lay very still for a time.

“Should I fail her?...”

For a time Martin Leeds passed from the foreground of his mind.

He was astonished to think how planless, instinctive and unforeseeing his treatment of Miss Grammont had been.  It had been just a blind drive to get hold of her and possess her....

Suddenly his passion for her became active in its defence again.

“But is there such a thing as a perfect love?  Is yours a perfect love, my dear Martin, with its insatiable jealousy, its ruthless criticism?  Has the world ever seen a perfect lover yet?  Isn’t it our imperfection that brings us together in a common need?  Is Miss Grammont, after all, likely to get a more perfect love in all her life than this poor love of mine?  And isn’t it good for her that she should love?”