‘It is the excuse in vogue. The big social scientists put just the same plea forward for the criminal classes. Crime is an illness. A man may run a knife into another simply because his digestion, reacting on the nerve centres, happened to be out of order. Probably, like you, my dear, the poor fellow had been suffering from insomnia! Such excuses,’ added Gaston, ‘are comforting enough for the man with the knife, but scarcely so consolatory to him stabbed.’ Dinah touched the flower stalks wistfully. She folded the ribbon with care before returning it to the envelope. Her hands trembled in her excitement. ‘You talk about reparation.... I shall not let an hour be lost. I shall write to Miss Bartrand at once, send back her own letter, and confess--oh, Gaston, the hard word is yours--that ’twas I kidnapped it.’ ‘You mean to perform this act of contrition for Geoffrey’s sake?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Poor Geff! After getting decently out of danger once (and his letters don’t savour of a broken heart), it seems a trifle rough on him to have the thing revived.’ ‘_Poor_ Geff!’ echoed Dinah, her eyes glistening through their tears. ‘You call a man poor who has a chance of winning Marjorie Bartrand’s love? Does our happiness make you such an egotist,’--the reader will note that Dinah’s vocabulary was enlarging,--‘such an egotist you do not care for other people to marry?’ ‘Or are you like the fox in the fable, my dear child--which?’ Dinah rested her clasped hands upon her husband’s shoulder, and cogitated softly. ‘Yes, I shall write to Tintajeux to-night. If it is not too late, if the hearts of both are free, Miss Bartrand will find some way of letting Geoffrey know the truth.’ ‘Of that you may be assured. If two women are to conspire together in league against him, I say “poor Geff” with still more marked emphasis.’ And rising, Gaston moved in the direction of the door. In these later days, in the confidence of established love, Dinah had thought it no grievance that her husband should join the Florentine Artists’ Club, or spend a portion of every evening in other society than hers. ‘Like all true women you are a remorseless match-maker,’ he told her. ‘Unless the flame between these two victims is clean burnt out, you will contrive by your letter to re-kindle it.’ ‘I wish I were a better scribe--that I could put my heart between the lines! Oh, I must begin at once. Baby shall be left--for the first time--with old Giacintha, and I will run round to the Piazza, and post the letter myself.’ ‘Five years hence, I hope Geoffrey will bless you for having written it. There was a flash of temper not to be forgotten in Marjorie Bartrand’s handsome eyes.’ ‘And if there was! If a woman has a temper, even a jealous one, is it impossible for her husband’s life to be happy?’ Dinah had followed Gaston to the door. She held up her face--the loveliest face in Florence, said the artists who worked therein--for his kiss.