“No, that’s just what I don’t understand.  I can’t understand his caring.  I can’t understand him.  I can’t understand anything.”  Her voice shook.

“Poor darling, I know it’s hard, sometimes.  Still, you do know what he is.”

“I know what he was—­what I thought him.  It’s hard to reconcile it with what he is.”

“With what you think him?  You can’t, of course.  I suppose you think him something too bad for words?”

Anne broke down weakly.

“Oh, Edith, why didn’t you tell me?”

“What?  That Wallie was bad?”

“Yes, yes.  It would have been better if you’d told me everything.”

“Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn’t have told you that.  It wouldn’t have been true.”

“He says himself that everything was true.”

“Everything probably is true.  But then, the point is that you don’t know the whole truth, or even half of it.  That’s just what he couldn’t tell you.  I should have told you.  That’s where I bungled it.  You know he left it to me; he said I was to tell you.”

“Yes, he told me that.  He didn’t mean to deceive me.”

“No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose for a moment I’d have let him marry my dearest friend?”

“You didn’t know.  We don’t know these things, Edith.  That’s the terrible part of it.”

“Yes, it’s the terrible part of it.  But I knew all right.  He never kept anything from me, not for long.”

“But, Edith—­how could he?  How could he?  When the woman—­Lady Cayley—­She was bad, wasn’t she?”

“Of course she was bad.  Bad as they make them—­worse.  You know she was divorced?”

“Yes,” said Anne, “that’s what I do know.”

“Well, she wasn’t divorced on Walter’s account, my dear.  There were several others—­four, five, goodness knows how many.  Poor Walter was a mere drop in her ocean.”

Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her.

“But,” said she, “he was in it.”

“Oh yes, he was in it.  The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the others.  But it couldn’t keep him.  He couldn’t live in it, like them.”

“But how did she get hold of him?”

“She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry.”

(His chivalry—­she knew it.)

“It’s what happens, over and over again.  He thought her a vilely injured woman.  He may have thought her good.  He certainly thought her pathetic.  It was the pathos that did it.”

“That—­did—­it?”

“Yes.  Did it.  She hurled herself at his head—­at his knees—­at his feet—–­till he had to lift her.  And that’s how it happened.”

Anne’s spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening.

“I know it oughtn’t to have happened.  I know Walter wasn’t the holy saint he ought to have been.  But oh, he was a martyr!” She paused.  “And—­he was very young.”