ed over him like a faithful dog; and he had given her nothing in
return for all that, not one thing that deserved to be counted. Perhaps
he had not even really loved her; most surely his love had been far less
large and true and devoted than hers, and he felt that it was so. The
reparation he was determined to make was not really for her honesty's
sake; it was to be an attempt at repaying a debt that was weighing upon
his conscience like a debt of honour.

That was it. He felt that unless he could in some way repay her for what
she had done, his man's honour would not be satisfied. That was very
well, in its way, but it was not love. It was as if he had said to
himself, "I cannot love her as she loves me, but I can at least marry
her; and that is better than nothing, and has the merit of being morally
right."

She had told him that if she still made him happy he would not talk of
marriage. The brutal truth shamed him, now that he knew it from her own
lips. It was not the whole truth, but it was a great part of it. If he
was happy with her now, when there was nothing to disturb them, it was
by force of habit, it was because her beauty appealed to him, it was
because her touch was dearer to him than her heart's devotion. Now that
he was a grown man, he knew well enough that he craved something else
which poor Regina could never give him.

For he felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most
worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's,
miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of
the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the
dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for
the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is
very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound; and it
comes again and again for years, and perhaps for ever.

But where there is no true companionship while love lasts, there is
something lacking, and such love cannot live long. Men seem to want it
more than women do; and women, seeing that men want something, often
fancy they want flattery, and natter the men they love till they disgust
them; and then the end comes suddenly, much to the astonishment of those
women.

Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real need of
something which she had not, and could never have. She had known it from
the first, and had almost told him so.