"But, dear, we are not going to regret _that_, I hope. We have got something 'saved from chance and change,' if not much, that to me at any rate--yes and to you too, I know--is worth even this heavy price that we are paying for it now. It need not spoil our lives, Rachel, to know--what we know. It is an agonising thing to see how blessed it _might_ have been for us, and to be obliged to give it all up; but I shall never think of those two hours, when we belonged entirely to each other--only two hours, Rachel, out of our whole lives!--without being thankful for the chance which gave them to us. Yes, and I think we shall be the better for them--I don't say happier, because I really don't know what that word means--but I think life will somehow have a finer quality henceforth, whatever happens, on account of those two hours. Dear, I am forcing myself to give in to the hard fate that has done us out of our inheritance; but there is one thing that I don't think I _could_ get reconciled to--and that is to thinking that you would ever live to wish that we had never known each other." "I could not wish it," she whispered; "I could only try to persuade myself that I did." "Do not try. You are under no obligation of duty to do that. Try to be happy with your husband--try not to fret over what is irrevocable, and not to hanker after what is hopeless. But don't try to turn me out of the only place in your life where I have a corner of my own. Let me keep the little of you that I have got--it is little enough! Do you remember what you said to me that night?--you said you had no rights in my past. _He_ has no rights in our past. Keep it sacred, Rachel, for my sake. That will not hurt anybody. You are not afraid that such remembrances, if you shut them away in your heart, will militate against your efforts to do what is right by him? And you are not afraid that _I_ will ever tempt or trouble you?" "Oh, Roden, I am not afraid of you--you well know that!" "Treat me as if I were dead," he said gently. "If I had been killed that time when I was thrown--if I were in my grave now--I know how you would think of me. You would not wish you had never seen me then. That is how I _want_ you to think of me, Rachel." "I know," she said, drawing a deep breath. "But to me--even if you _had_ killed yourself--to me you could never be dead." By this time they had sauntered slowly out of the deserted hall and through the empty vestibules, and were standing in the doorway, looking out upon the street below them.