choose 'Marko or Tybar? Oh, dash it--Tybar.' I never
reproached her, not by a look. I saw her point of view. My infernal
failing, even then. Not by a look I ever reproached her. I thought I'd
forgotten it, absolutely. But I haven't. It came out in that moment that
I haven't. 'The life you've--taken!' I meant it to sting. Damn me, it
did sting. That look she gave! As if I had struck her.--What rot! How
could it sting her? How could she mind? Only if she regretted.--Is it
_likely_?"

He thought, "But _is_ she happy? Is it all what it appears between them?
That remark she made to that woman and the extraordinary way she said
it. 'You never forget you're married, do you?' Amazing thing to say, the
way she said it. What did she mean? And that woman. She said something
like, 'Nor you, do you?' and looked at me and then at Tybar. And Tybar
looked--at Nona, at me, as if he'd got some joke, some mock...."

He thought, "What rot! She chose. She knew he was her sort. She knew I
wasn't. She chose deliberately...."

Clearly, as it were yesterday, he remembered the day she had declared to
him her choice. In the Cathedral cloisters. Walking together. And
suddenly, in the midst of indifferent things, she told him, "I say,
Marko, I'm going to marry Lord Tybar."

And his reply, the model of indifference. "Are you, Nona?"

Nothing else said of it between them. There would certainly have been
more discussion if she had said she was going to buy a packet of
hairpins. And his thought had immediately been, not this nor that nor
the other of a hundred thoughts proper to a blow so stunning, but merely
and immediately and precisely that he would tell his father Yes to what
that very morning he had told him No,--that he would go into the
Fortune, East and Sabre business. Extraordinary effect from such a
cause! Grotesque. Paradoxical. Going into Fortune, East and Sabre meant
"settling down"; marriage conventionally involved settling down; yet,
while he had visioned marriage with Nona, settling down had been the
last thing in the world to think of,--because he projected marriage with
Nona, he had that very morning rejected settling down. He was not to
marry her; therefore, yes, he would settle down. Amazing. He had not
realised how amazing till now.

And catastrophic. Not till now had he realised to what catastrophe he
then had plunged. He thought, "The fact was Nona touched things in me
that helped me. Without her I just shut down--I just g