t's a relief, it's a consolation, to tell _you._ I am fretting
about my marriage."

Those words roused me. I lifted my head, and kissed her. "I have come
back to comfort you," I said: "and I have behaved like a fool."

She smiled faintly. "How like you," she exclaimed, "to say that!" She
tapped my cheek with her fingers in the old familiar way. The repetition
of that little trifling action almost broke my heart. I nearly choked
myself in forcing back the stupid cowardly useless tears that tried to
burst from me again. "Come!" she said. "No more crying! Let us sit down
and talk as if we were at Dimchurch."

I took her to the sofa: we sat side by side. She put her arm round my
waist, and laid her head on my shoulder. Again the faint smile flickered
like a dying light on her lovely face; wan and wasted, yet still
beautiful--still the Virgin's face in Raphael's picture. "We are a
strange pair," she said, with a momentary flash of her old irresistible
humour. "You are my bitterest enemy, and you burst out crying over me the
moment we meet. I have been shockingly treated by you--and I have got my
arm round your waist and my head on your shoulder, and I wouldn't let go
of you for the world!" Her face saddened again; her voice suddenly
altered its tone. "Tell me," she went on, "how is it that appearances
were so terribly against you? Oscar satisfied me, at Ramsgate, that I
ought to give you up, that I ought never to see you again. I took his
view--there is no denying it, my dear--I agreed with him in detesting
you, for a little while. But, when the blindness came back, I could keep
it up no longer. Little by little, as the light died out, my heart
_would_ turn to you again. When I heard your letter read, when I knew
that you were near me--it was just like the old times; I was mad to see
you. And here I am--satisfied, before you explain it to me, that you have
been the victim of some terrible mistake."

I tried, in grateful acknowledgment of those generous words, to enter on
my justification there and then. It was impossible. I could think of
nothing, I could speak of nothing, but the dreadful discovery of her
blindness.

"Give me a few minutes," I said, "and you shall hear it all. I can't talk
of myself, yet--I can only talk of you. Oh, Lucilla, why did you keep
away from Grosse? Come with me to him to-day. Let him try what he can do.
At once, my love--before it is too late!"

"It _is_ too late," she said. "I have been to