She came nearer to him, so near that he could hear her breathing, the touch of her fingers upon the back of a chair; and presently she spoke again: "You think there was no excuse for him?" "Ah--for excuse! She was pretty, you know!" He got up, and stood facing her for a moment in the darkness, and then, while she appeared to consider, glanced at his watch, and made a suggestion of movement towards the door. "Only a minute, Dick," she said, in the same set voice. "You will do me the justice to admit that I haven't alluded to this before. But I have been thinking--I can't help it--and I want to know----" "To know?" he echoed impatiently. "To know your position--our position; what you had to do with it all." "What is the good? What difference can it make?" "It's the doubt," she said--"the doubt. I thought you might like to explain." "To explain? Good Lord! what have I to explain? Is it not all settled, all clear? My dear child, let us be reasonable, let us forget; it's the only way." There was less of anger in his voice, but if Eve could have seen his eyes in the firelight, she might have noticed that they were very bright, and their pupils were contracted to hard, iridescent points. "How can it be settled," she asked wearily, "while there is this shadow of doubt? And to forget--Heaven knows I have tried!" Dick shrugged his shoulders tolerantly. "What do you want me to say?--to explain?" "Could you not have warned him, Dick? Did you not see it coming? She, that woman, was she not your model? Did he not meet her at your studio? Was not that the beginning of it all? Ah, can you say that you were not to blame?" She spoke fast, following question with question, as if she anticipated the answer with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and there was more of entreaty than of denunciation in her last words. "It's such an old story," he rejoined, with an air of feeble protest. "How could I foresee what would happen? And," he added, hardening himself, "they did not meet for the first time at my studio; on the contrary, it was he who brought her to me, and I suspected nothing. What more can I say? Surely it is all plain enough!" Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have given himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only without a stain upon his character--the expression occurred to him with a kind of familiar mockery--but with beaten drums and flying colours. He reflected that this was another example of the folly of attempting to economize. At the same time he was gently thrilled by what he owned to himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed to speak so naturally and pathetically of disillusionment, it was such a simple little confession of a damaged ideal. It did not occur to him to suspect that the character of which his wife had formed too proudly high an estimate was his own.