Constance also put aside her cup.  She was bewildered, and just a little abashed.  With courage which came he knew not whence, Christian bent forward and continued speaking: 

’Whom could I marry after that day when I met you in the little drawing-room at the Robinsons’?’

She stared in genuine astonishment, then was embarrassed.

‘You cannot—­cannot have forgotten——?’

’You surely don’t mean to say, Mr. Moxey, that you have remembered?  Oh, I’m afraid I was a shocking flirt in those days!’

’But I mean after your marriage—­when I found you in tears’——­

‘Please, please don’t remind me!’ she exclaimed, giggling nervously.  ’Oh how silly!—­of me, I mean.  To think that—­but you are making fun of me, Mr. Moxey?’

Christian rose and went to the window.  He was not only shaken by his tender emotions—­something very like repugnance had begun to affect him.  If Constance were feigning, it was in very bad taste; if she spoke with sincerity—­what a woman had he worshipped!  It did not occur to him to lay the fault upon his own absurd romanticism.  After eleven years’ persistence in one point of view, he could not suddenly see the affair with the eyes of common sense.

He turned and approached her again.

‘Do you not know, then,’ he asked, with quiet dignity, ’that ever since the day I speak of, I have devoted my life to the love I then felt?  All these years, have you not understood me?’

Mrs. Palmer was quite unable to grasp ideas such as these.  Neither her reading nor her experience prepared her to understand what Christian meant.  Courtship of a married woman was intelligible enough to her; but a love that feared to soil itself, a devotion from afar, encouraged by only the faintest hope of reward other than the most insubstantial—­of that she had as little conception as any woman among the wealthy vulgar.

’Do you really mean, Mr. Moxey, that you—­have kept unmarried for my sake?’

‘You don’t know that?’ he asked, hoarsely.

’How could I?  How was I to imagine such a thing?  Really, was it proper?  How could you expect me, Mr. Moxey——?’

For a moment she looked offended.  But her real feelings were astonishment and amusement, not unmingled with an idle gratification.

‘I must ask you to pardon me,’ said Christian, whose forehead gleamed with moisture.

‘No, don’t say that.  I am really so sorry!  What an odd mistake!’

‘And I have hoped in vain—­since you were free——?’

’Oh, you mustn’t say such things!  I shall never dream of marrying again—­never!’

There was a matter-of-fact vigour in the assertion which proved that Mrs. Palmer spoke her genuine thought.  The tone could not be interpreted as devotion to her husband’s memory; it meant, plainly and simply, that she had had enough of marriage, and delighted in her freedom.