o understand and forgive her, but it was part
of the conditions that I could not know all. Justin had been generous,
in his way.... Justin had everything in his hands, the whole world was
behind him against us, and I must give in. Those letters had a quality I
had never before met in her, they were broken-spirited. I could not
understand them fully, and they left me perplexed, with a strong desire
to see her, to question her, to learn more fully what this change in her
might mean.

Tarvrille's notes recorded his repeated attempts to see me, I felt that
he alone was capable of clearing up things for me, and I went out again
at once and telegraphed to him for an appointment.

He wired to me from that same house in Mayfair in which I had first met
Mary after my return. He asked me to come to him in the afternoon, and
thither I went through a November fog, and found him in the drawing-room
that had the plate glass above the fireplace. But now he was vacating
the house, and everything was already covered up, the pictures and their
frames were under holland, the fine furniture all in covers of faded
stuff, the chandeliers and statues wrapped up, the carpets rolled out of
the way. Even the window-curtains were tucked into wrappers, and the
blinds, except one he had raised, drawn down. He greeted me and
apologized for the cold inhospitality of the house. "It was convenient
here," he said. "I came here to clear out my papers and boxes. And
there's no chance of interruptions."

He went and stood before the empty fireplace, and plunged into the
middle of the matter.

"You know, my dear Stratton, in this confounded business my heart's with
you. It has been all along. If I could have seen a clear chance before
you--for you and Mary to get away--and make any kind of life of
it--though she's my cousin--I'd have helped you. Indeed I would. But
there's no sort of chance--not the ghost of a chance...."

He began to explain very fully, quite incontrovertibly, that entire
absence of any chance for Mary and myself together. He argued to the
converted. "You know as well as I do what that romantic flight abroad,
that Ouidaesque casa in some secluded valley, comes to in reality. All
round Florence there's no end of such scandalous people, I've been among
them, the nine circles of the repenting scandalous, all cutting one
another."

"I agree," I said. "And yet----"

"What?"

"We could have come back."

Tarvrille paused, and then lea