She upbraided me gently for treating everything as a jest.

“It isn’t that you want to get rid of me, Simon?” she asked tearfully, but with an attempt at a smile.

I took both hands and looked into her eyes—­they are brave, truthful eyes—­and through my heart shot a great pain.  Till that moment I had not realised what I was giving up.  The pleasant paths of the world—­I could leave them behind with a shrug.  Political ambition, power, I could justly estimate their value and could let them pass into other hands without regret.  But here was the true, staunch woman, great of heart and wise, a helper and a comrade, and, if I chose to throw off the jester and become the lover in real earnest and sweep my hand across the hidden chords, all that a woman can become towards the man she loves.  I realised this.

I realised that if she did not love me passionately now it was only because I, in my foolishness, had willed it otherwise.  For the first time I longed to have her as my own; for the first time I rebelled.  I looked at her hungeringly until her cheeks grew red and her eyelids fluttered.  I had a wild impulse to throw my arms around her, and kiss her as I had never kissed her before and bid her forget all that I had said that day.  Her faltering eyes told me that they read my longing.  I was about to yield when the little devil of a pain inside made itself sharply felt and my madness went from me.  I fetched a thing half-way between a sigh and a groan, and dropped her hands.

“Need I answer your question?” I asked.

She turned her head aside and whispered “No.”

Presently she said, “I am glad I came back from Sicily.  I shouldn’t have liked you to write this to me.  I shouldn’t have understood.”

“Do you now?”

“I think so.”  She looked at me frankly.  “Until just now I was never quite certain whether you really cared for me.”

“I never cared for you so much as I do now, when I have to lose you.”

“And you must lose me?”

“A man in my condition would be a scoundrel if he married a woman.”

“Then it is very, very serious—­your illness?”

“Yes,” said I, “very serious.  I must give you your freedom whether you want it or not.”

She passed one hand over the other on her knee, looking at the engagement ring.  Then she took it off and presented it to me, lying in the palm of her right hand.

“Do what you like with it,” she said very softly.

I took the ring and slipped it on one of the right-hand fingers.

“It would comfort me to think that you are wearing it,” said I.

Then her mother came into the room and Eleanor went out.  I am thankful to say that Mrs. Faversham who is a woman only guided by sentiment when it leads to a worldly advantage, applauded the step I had taken.  As a sprightly Member of Parliament, with an assured political and social position, I had been a most desirable son-in-law.  As an obscure invalid, coughing and spitting from a bath-chair at Bournemouth (she took it for granted that I was in the last stage of consumption), I did not take the lady’s fancy.