“Do you know, Everard,” she said, “I am so happy in London here with you, and I feel all the time so strong and well.  I can read and understand the books which were a maze of print to me before.  I can see the things in the pictures, and feel the thrill of the music, which seemed to come to me, somehow, before, all dislocated and discordant.  You understand, dear?”

“Of course,” he answered gravely.

“I do not wonder,” she went on, “that Doctor Harrison is proud of me for a patient, but there are many times when I feel a dull pain in my heart, because I know that, whatever he or anybody else might say, I am not quite cured.”

“Rosamund dear,” he protested.

“Ah, but don’t interrupt,” she insisted, depositing his share of the peach upon his plate.  “How can I be cured when all the time there is the problem of you, the problem which I am just as far off solving as ever I was?  Often I find myself comparing you with the Everard whom I married.”

“Do I fail so often to come up to his standard?” he asked.

“You never fail,” she answered, looking at him with brimming eyes.  “Of course, he was very much more affectionate,” she went on, after a moment’s pause.  “His kisses were not like yours.  And he was far fonder of having me with him.  Then, on the other hand, often when I wanted him he was not there, he did wild things, mad things; he seemed to forget me altogether.  It was that,” she went on, “that was so terrible.  It was that which made me so nervous.  I think that I should even have been able to stand those awful moments when he came back to me, covered with blood and reeling, if it had not been that I was already almost a wreck.  You know, he killed Roger Unthank that night.  That is why he was never able to come back.”

“Why do you talk of these things to-night, Rosamund,” Dominey begged.

“I must, dear,” she insisted, laying her fingers upon his hand and looking at him curiously.  “I must, even though I see how they distress you.  It is wonderful that you should mind so much, Everard, but you do, and I love you for it.”

“Mind?” he groaned.  “Mind!”

“You are so like him and yet so different,” she went on meditatively.  “You drink so little wine, you are always so self-controlled, so serious.  You live as though you had a life around you of which others knew nothing.  The Everard I remember would never have cared about being a magistrate or going into Parliament.  He would have spent his time racing or yachting, hunting or shooting, as the fancy took him.  And yet—­”

“And yet what?” Dominey asked, a little hoarsely.

“I think he loved me better than you,” she said very sadly.

“Why?” he demanded.

“I cannot tell you,” she answered, with her eyes upon her plate, “but I think that he did.”

Dominey walked suddenly to the window and leaned out.  There were drops of moisture upon his forehead, he felt the fierce need of air.  When he came back she was still sitting there, still looking down.