"I do not think," she continues, "that I ever loved you in the sense that women can love; but you had the power to make me suffer, to feel your oblivion, to remember you when you had forgotten me. When I went into the world again I heard of your successes with others, and gradually I came to see you in your true light, and, almost, the drunken brutality of Prince Sabaroff seemed to me a manlier thing than your half-hearted and shallow erotics had been. Now, when we meet again by pure hazard in the same country house, you do me the honor to offer me your hand after eight years. I can only say, as I have said before, that it is seven years too late!" "Too late, only because Lord Brandolin now is everything to you." "Lord Brandolin may possibly be something to me in the future. But, if Lord Brandolin did not exist, if no other living man existed, be sure that it would make no difference to me--or to you." "Is that your last word?" "Yes." Pale and agitated as no other woman had ever seen him, Gervase bows low and leaves her abruptly, pushing open one of the glass doors on to the garden and closing it with a clash behind him. Xenia Sabaroff goes towards the large library, her silvery train catching the lights and shadows as she goes. Brandolin meets her with his hands outstretched. "You are content, then?" she asks. "I am more than content,--if I may be allowed to atone to you for all that you have suffered." His own eyes are dim as he speaks. "But you know that the world will always say that he was my lover?" "I do not think that the world will say it--of my wife; but, if it do, I, at least, shall not be troubled." "You have a great nature," she says, with deep emotion. Brandolin smiles. "Oh, I cannot claim so much as that; but I have a great love." * * * * * "I'm awfully glad that prig's got spun," says George Usk, as Gervase receives a telegram from the Foreign Office which requires his departure from Surrenden at four o'clock that afternoon. "Spun! What imagination!" says his wife, very angrily. "Who should have spun him, pray will you tell me?" "We shall never hear it in so many words," says Usk, with a grim complacency, "but I'll swear, if I die for it, that he's asked your Russian friend to marry him and that she's said she won't. Very wise of her, too. Especially if, as you imply, they carried on together years ago: he'd be eternally throwing it in her teeth: he's what the Yanks call a 'tarnation mean cuss.'" "I never implied anything of the sort," answers the lady of Surrenden, with great decorum and dignity. "I never suppose that all my friends are all they ought to be, whatever _yours_ may leave to be desired. If he were attached long ago to Madame Sabaroff, it is neither your affair nor mine. It may possibly concern Lord Brandolin, if he have the intentions which you attribute to him."