d I tell her? She'd got to a way of living that
fulfilled her requirements. Perhaps she'd never hear. But all that day
and the day before I'd been making up my mind to do the thing.

"I want to tell you something," I said. "I wish you'd sit down for a
moment or so."...

Once I had begun, it seemed to me I had to go through with it.

Something in the quality of my voice gave her an intimation of unusual
gravity. She looked at me steadily for a moment and sat down slowly in
my armchair.

"What is it?" she said.

I went on awkwardly. "I've got to tell you--something extraordinarily
distressing," I said.

She was manifestly altogether unaware.

"There seems to be a good deal of scandal abroad--I've only recently
heard of it--about myself--and Isabel."

"Isabel!"

I nodded.

"What do they say?" she asked.

It was difficult, I found, to speak.

"They say she's my mistress."

"Oh! How abominable!"

She spoke with the most natural indignation. Our eyes met.

"We've been great friends," I said.

"Yes. And to make THAT of it. My poor dear! But how can they?" She
paused and looked at me. "It's so incredible. How can any one believe
it? I couldn't."

She stopped, with her distressed eyes regarding me. Her expression
changed to dread. There was a tense stillness for a second, perhaps.

I turned my face towards the desk, and took up and dropped a handful of
paper fasteners.

"Margaret," I said, "I'm afraid you'll have to believe it."

5

Margaret sat very still. When I looked at her again, her face was very
white, and her distressed eyes scrutinised me. Her lips quivered as she
spoke. "You really mean--THAT?" she said.

I nodded.

"I never dreamt."

"I never meant you to dream."

"And that is why--we've been apart?"

I thought. "I suppose it is."

"Why have you told me now?"

"Those rumours. I didn't want any one else to tell you."

"Or else it wouldn't have mattered?"

"No."

She turned her eyes from me to the fire. Then for a moment she looked
about the room she had made for me, and then quite silently, with a
childish quivering of her lips, with a sort of dismayed distress upon
her face, she was weeping. She sat weeping in her dress of cloth of
gold, with her bare slender arms dropped limp over the arms of her
chair, and her eyes averted from me, making no effort to stay or staunch
her tears. "I am sorry, Margaret," I said. "I was in love.... I did not
understand...."

Presently