't escape from him; as long
as he's there he keeps me." She looked in Marchmont's face and then shook
her head, half-sadly, half-playfully. "You don't understand a bit, do
you?" she asked.

"No, I don't," he said bluntly, with an accent of impatience and almost
of exasperation. Recognising it, she gave the slightest shrug of her
shoulders.

"It's my infatuation again, I suppose, as you all said when I married
him. It makes you all angry. Oh, it makes me angry too, as far as that
goes."

"He's ruining your whole life."

She made no answer, relapsing into the still silence which had preceded
her tears. Marchmont was baffled again by his old inability to follow the
movements of her mind and the old sense of blindness in dealing with her
to which it gave rise. Owing to this he had lost her at the first; now it
seemed to prevent him from repairing the loss. In spite of all that they
had in common, in spite of the strong attraction she felt towards him and
of the love he bore her, there was always, as she had said once, at last
a break somewhere, some solution in the chain of sympathy that should
have bound them together. But he would not admit this, and chose to see
the only barrier between them in the man who was ruining her life.

"You'd be yourself again if only you could get away from him," he
murmured resentfully.

"Perhaps; I never shall, though." She added, laughing a little, "Neither
will you. I've made you an accomplice, you're bound to a guilty silence
now." Then, growing grave, she leant towards him. "Don't look like that,"
she said, "pray, pray, pray don't. I haven't spoilt your life as well as
my own? No, you mustn't tell me that." Her voice grew very tender and
low. "But I can say almost all you want. I wish I had loved you, I wish I
had married you. Oh, how I wish it! I should have been happy, I think,
and I know I--I shouldn't have had to live as I do now and do the things
I have to do now. Well, it's too late."

"You're very young," he said in a voice as low as hers. "It mayn't always
be too late."

She started a little, drawing away from him. He had brought back thoughts
which the stress of pain and excitement had banished from her mind.

"You mean----?" she murmured. "I know what you mean, though." Her face
showed again a sort of puzzle. "I can't think of that happening. I tried
the other day--_a propos_ of something else; but I couldn't. I couldn't
see it, you know. It doesn't fit my ideas abou