, ah, a letter
from my soul! and then came down to this--the end of all. The end of
everything--forever."

"No, the beginning if you will have it so.... Rudyard loves you ..."

She gave a cry of agony. "For God's sake--oh, for God's sake, hush! ...
You think that now I could ..."

"Begin again with new purpose."

"Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool--you who are so wise
sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not want
me to begin again--with you?"

He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily.

"You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe
me--because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian
Fellowes' letter.... You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not
believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and
that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has
done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have
spoken to me about it if you had not warned him."

"Then begin again--"

"You do not want me any more." The voice had an anguish like the cry of
the tragic music in "Elektra." "You do not want what you wanted
yesterday--for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? You
hate me."

His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment.

In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she
caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it from
her hand.

"Do you think that would mend anything?" he asked, with a new pity in
his heart for her. "That would only hurt those who have been hurt
enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give others
a chance."

"You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness," she moaned. "You
were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in that?
Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in me, of
course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was magnanimous--when
you had got a woman's love, then to kill yourself in order to cure her?
Oh, how little you know! ... But you do not want me now. You do not
believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter had not fallen into
Rudyard's hands we might perhaps have now been on our way to begin life
again together. Does that look as though there was some one else that
mattered--that mattered?"

He held himself together with all his power and will. "There is one
way, and only one way," he sai