loyal to our compact. Now that love
has come into my life--and Heaven knows I have striven against it--what
would you have me do?"

"And what would you have me do?" said Judith, tonelessly.

"Forgive me for breaking off the old, and trust me to make the new
pleasant to you."

She made no answer, but stood still staring out of the window like a
woman of stone. Presently she shivered and crossed to the fire, before
which she crouched on a low chair. I remained by the window, anxious,
puzzled, oppressed.

"Marcus," she said at last, in a low voice. I obeyed her summons. She
motioned me to a chair, and without looking at me began to speak.

"You said there was a bit of you in this room. There is everything of
you. Your whole being is for me in this room. You are with me wherever
I go. You are the beginning and end of life to me. I love you with a
passion that is killing me. I am an emotional woman. I made shipwreck
of myself because I thought I loved a man. But, as God hears me, you are
the only man I have loved. You came to me like a breath of Heaven while
I was in Purgatory--and you have been Heaven to me ever since. It has
been play to you--but to me--"

I fell on my knees beside her. Each of the low half-whispered words was
a red hot iron. I had received last night the message of her white face
with incredulity. I had reviewed our past life together and had found
little warrant in it for that message. It could not come from the
depths. It was staggeringly impossible. And now the impossible was the
flaming fact.

I fell on my knees beside her.

"Not play, Judith--"

She put out her hand to check me, and the words died on my lips. What
could I say?

"For you it was a detached pleasant sentiment, if you like; for me the
deadliest earnest. I was a fool too. You never said you loved me, but I
thought you did. You were not as other men, you knew nothing of the
ways of the world or of women or of passion--you were reserved,
intellectual--you viewed things in a queer light of your own. I
felt that the touch of a chain would fret you. I gave you absolute
freedom--often when I craved for you. I made no demands. I assented to
your philosophic analysis of the situation--it is your way to moralise
whimsically on everything, as if you were a disconnected intelligence
outside the universe--and I paid no attention to it. I used to laugh at
you--oh, not unkindly, but lovingly, happily, victoriously. Oh, yes,
I was a fool--