“What’s done is done,” she said, between her teeth.  “When did you marry her?”

I explained briefly the condition of affairs.  She looked at me hard and long; then stared out of the window again, and scarce heeded what I said.

“It was to set myself right with you on this point,” I added, “that I have visited you at such an hour.”

She remained silent.  I took a few turns about the familiar room that was filled with the associations of many years.  The piano we chose together.  The copy of the Botticelli Tondo—­the crowned Madonna of the Uffizi—­I gave her in Florence.  We had ransacked London together to find the Chippendale bookcase; and on its shelves stood books that had formed a bond between us, and copies of old reviews containing my fugitive contributions.  A spurious Japanese dragon in fa‹ence, an inartistic monstrosity dear to her heart, at which I had often railed, grinned forgivingly at me from the mantel-piece.  I have never realised how closely bound up with my habits was this drawing-room of Judith’s.  I stopped once more by her side.

“I can’t leave you altogether, dear,” I said, gently.  “A bit of myself is in this room.”

Her bosom shook with unhappy laughter.

“A bit?” Then she turned suddenly on me.  “Are you simply dull or sheerly cruel?”

“I am dull,” said I.  “Why do you refuse my friendship?  Our relation has been scarcely more.  It has not touched the deep things in us.  We agreed at the start that it should not.  The words ‘I love you’ have never passed between us.  We have been loyal to our compact.  Now that love has come into my life—­and Heaven knows I have striven against it—­what would you have me do?”

“And what would you have me do?” said Judith, tonelessly.

“Forgive me for breaking off the old, and trust me to make the new pleasant to you.”

She made no answer, but stood still staring out of the window like a woman of stone.  Presently she shivered and crossed to the fire, before which she crouched on a low chair.  I remained by the window, anxious, puzzled, oppressod.

“Marcus,” she said at last, in a low voice.  I obeyed her summons.  She motioned me to a chair, and without looking at me began to speak.

“You said there was a bit of you in this room.  There is everything of you.  Your whole being is for me in this room.  You are with me wherever I go.  You are the beginning and end of life to me.  I love you with a passion that is killing me.  I am an emotional woman.  I made shipwreck of myself because I thought I loved a man.  But, as God hears me, you are the only man I have loved.  You came to me like a breath of Heaven while I was in Purgatory—­and you have been Heaven to me ever since.  It has been play to you—­but to me—­”

I fell on my knees beside her.  Each of the low half-whispered words was a red hot iron.  I had received last night the message of her white face with incredulity.  I had reviewed our past life together and had found little warrant in it for that message.  It could not come from the depths.  It was staggeringly impossible.  And now the impossible was the flaming fact.