“My idea of marriage isn’t worth very much, I’m afraid,” he said.  “If I talked about it, I should have to confine myself to theories and—­and dreams.”

“The moment I saw your card, Peter, I knew why you had come here,” she said, trying to steady her voice.  “It was to induce me to go back to my husband.  You don’t know how it hurts me to give you pain.  I love you—­I love you as I love Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary.  You are a part of me.  But oh, you can’t understand!  I knew you could not.  You have never made any mistakes—­you have never lived.  It is useless.  I won’t go back to him.  If you stayed here for weeks you could not make me change my mind.”

He was silent.

“You think that I could have prevented—­this, if I had been less selfish,” she said.

“Where you are concerned, Honora, I have but one desire,” he answered, “and that is to see you happy—­in the best sense of the term.  If I could induce you to go back and give your husband another trial, I should return with a lighter heart.  You ask me whether I think you have been selfish.  I answer frankly that I think you have.  I don’t pretend to say your husband has not been selfish also.  Neither of you have ever tried, apparently, to make your marriage a success.  It can’t be done without an honest effort.  You have abandoned the most serious and sacred enterprise in the world as lightly as though it had been a piece of embroidery.  All that I can gather from your remarks is that you have left your husband because you have grown tired of him.”

“Yes,” said Honora, “and you can never realize how tired, unless you knew him as I did.  When love dies, it turns into hate.”

He rose, and walked to the other end of the room, and turned.

“Could you be induced,” he said, “for the sake of your aunt and uncle, if not for your own, to consider a legal separation?”

For an instant she stared at him hopelessly, and then she buried her face in her hands.

“No,” she cried.  “No, I couldn’t.  You don’t know what you ask.”

He went to her, and laid his hand lightly on her shoulder.

“I think I do,” he said.

There was a moment’s tense silence, and then she got to her feet and looked at him proudly.

“Yes,” she cried, “it is true.  And I am not ashamed of it.  I have discovered what love is, and what life is, and I am going to take them while I can.”

She saw the blood slowly leave his face, and his hands tighten.  It was not until then that she guessed at the depth of his wound, and knew that it was unhealed.  For him had been reserved this supreme irony, that he should come here to plead for her husband and learn from her own lips that she loved another man.  She was suddenly filled with awe, though he turned away from her that she might not see his face:  And she sought in vain for words.  She touched his hand, fearfully, and now it was he who trembled.