"I don't see how I could have done anything different; I don't see it now any more than I saw it then. You won't forgive Oliver, I suppose--my old Sir Oliver! In fact, if I know you, Cousin Arthur, you've been trying to paint him blacker in the hope of making me whiter! But he gives me a wonderful life. I never really knew what a man could do for a woman's life before. Well, I'd had no chance of understanding that, had I? It's not being in love that I mean so much. After all, I've been in love before--yes, and with Godfrey, as I told you once. And Oliver's not an angel, of course--about as far from it as a man could be----" "I should think so," Arthur remarked drily. She smiled at him. "But there's a sort of largeness about him, about the way he feels as well as the things he goes in for. And then his courage! Oh, but I daresay you don't want to hear me talk about him. I really came only to talk about Margaret." "You must know I'm glad to hear you're happy." She caught a tone of constraint in his voice; the words sounded almost formal. "Yes, I suppose you are--and ready to let it go at that?" she asked quickly, with a little resentment. "What else can I do--or say?" he answered, slowly and with a puzzled frown. "I've got nothing more to do with it. I really belong to--to what you've left behind you. I made a queer mess of my part of it, but still I did belong there. I don't belong to this new life of yours, do I?" She shrugged her shoulders. "No, I suppose you don't. You belong to Hilsey? Is that it? And I'm trying to get you on my side--unfairly?" She challenged him now with something like anger. "Oh, it's not a question of sides! I tried not to take sides. The thing went too deep for that. And why must I, why should I? But there's what's happened--the state of things, you see." "And the state of things makes you belong to Hilsey, and prevents your having anything to do with me?" "That's putting it too strongly----" he began. "Oh, but you mean it comes to that?" she insisted. "I don't see how, in practice, it can work out very differently from that."