Jennifer.  How?

Ridgeon.  No matter.  I have saved you.  I have been the best friend you ever had.  You are happy.  You are well.  His works are an imperishable joy and pride for you.

Jennifer.  And you think that is your doing.  Oh doctor, doctor!  Sir Patrick is right:  you do think you are a little god.  How can you be so silly?  You did not paint those pictures which are my imperishable joy and pride:  you did not speak the words that will always be heavenly music in my ears.  I listen to them now whenever I am tired or sad.  That is why I am always happy.

Ridgeon.  Yes, now that he is dead.  Were you always happy when he was alive?

Jennifer [wounded] Oh, you are cruel, cruel.  When he was alive I did not know the greatness of my blessing.  I worried meanly about little things.  I was unkind to him.  I was unworthy of him.

Ridgeon [laughing bitterly] Ha!

Jennifer.  Dont insult me:  dont blaspheme. [She snatches up the book and presses it to her heart in a paroxysm of remorse, exclaiming] Oh, my King of Men!

Ridgeon.  King of Men!  Oh, this is too monstrous, too grotesque.  We cruel doctors have kept the secret from you faithfully; but it is like all secrets:  it will not keep itself.  The buried truth germinates and breaks through to the light.

Jennifer.  What truth?

Ridgeon.  What truth!  Why, that Louis Dubedat, King of Men, was the most entire and perfect scoundrel, the most miraculously mean rascal, the most callously selfish blackguard that ever made a wife miserable.

Jennifer [unshaken:  calm and lovely] He made his wife the happiest woman in the world, doctor.

Ridgeon.  No:  by all thats true on earth, he made his widow the happiest woman in the world; but it was I who made her a widow.  And her happiness is my justification and my reward.  Now you know what I did and what I thought of him.  Be as angry with me as you like:  at least you know me as I really am.  If you ever come to care for an elderly man, you will know what you are caring for.

Jennifer [kind and quiet] I am not angry with you any more, Sir Colenso.  I knew quite well that you did not like Louis; but it is not your fault:  you dont understand:  that is all.  You never could have believed in him.  It is just like your not believing in my religion:  it is a sort of sixth sense that you have not got.  And [with a gentle reassuring movement towards him] dont think that you have shocked me so dreadfully.  I know quite well what you mean by his selfishness.  He sacrificed everything for his art.  In a certain sense he had even to sacrifice everybody—­

Ridgeon.  Everybody except himself.  By keeping that back he lost the right to sacrifice you, and gave me the right to sacrifice him.  Which I did.

Jennifer [shaking her head, pitying his error] He was one of the men who know what women know:  that self-sacrifice is vain and cowardly.