hink it myself."

"He'd let us be friends--and meet."

"Let us be friends!" I cried, after a long pause. "You and me!"

"He wants me to be engaged soon. Then, he says, he can go round fighting
these rumours, defending us both--and force a quarrel on the Baileys."

"I don't understand him," I said, and added, "I don't understand you."

I was staring at her face. It seemed white and set in the dimness.

"Do you really mean this, Isabel?" I asked.

"What else is there to do, my dear?--what else is there to do at all?
I've been thinking day and night. You can't go away with me. You can't
smash yourself suddenly in the sight of all men. I'd rather die than
that should happen. Look what you are becoming in the country! Look at
all you've built up!--me helping. I wouldn't let you do it if you could.
I wouldn't let you--if it were only for Margaret's sake. THIS... closes
the scandal, closes everything."

"It closes all our life together," I cried.

She was silent.

"It never ought to have begun," I said.

She winced. Then abruptly she was on her knees before me, with her hands
upon my shoulder and her eyes meeting mine.

"My dear," she said very earnestly, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think
I'm retreating from the things we've done! Our love is the best thing I
could ever have had from life. Nothing can ever equal it; nothing could
ever equal the beauty and delight you and I have had together. Never!
You have loved me; you do love me...."

No one could ever know how to love you as I have loved you; no one could
ever love me as you have loved me, my king. And it's just because it's
been so splendid, dear; it's just because I'd die rather than have a
tithe of all this wiped out of my life again--for it's made me, it's all
I am--dear, it's years since I began loving you--it's just because of
its goodness that I want not to end in wreckage now, not to end in
the smashing up of all the big things I understand in you and love in
you....

"What is there for us if we keep on and go away?" she went on. "All
the big interests in our lives will vanish--everything. We shall become
specialised people--people overshadowed by a situation. We shall be
an elopement, a romance--all our breadth and meaning gone! People will
always think of it first when they think of us; all our work and aims
will be warped by it and subordinated to it. Is it good enough, dear?
Just to specialise.... I think of you. We've got a case, a passionat