"Very well. Remember, Audrey, if I wasn't good enough for you, I was good enough as men go. Now, I'll go to the devil, and give my whole mind to it. But I've a great deal to say to you before I go. You object to my life. Good or bad, it's your own work. It's women like you who make men like me. You knew my weakness, and played on it. You could have helped me, if you'd only given me up honestly at first, as another woman would have done; but you didn't want to do that. I'd have left England long before, if you'd let me go: you knew it, and you kept me here, though you saw me going to the bad. Oh, you were an artist in your own line! You knew the effect of every word, every touch, every movement of yours, and you went out of your way to--to make goodness impossible for me. God knows why, but you liked--you _liked_ to see me longing for what you never meant to give me. And because I didn't come out of that ordeal quite clean, you talk to me about my life, and tell me you are too good and pure to marry me. Are you really so very much better than I am, after all?" She sat still at first, with her eyes half closed, afraid to look up, afraid to move or speak, waiting for something to happen, for some one to come and stop Vincent. But the scourging voice went on with a relentless brutality, laying bare the secret places of her soul, its unconscious hypocrisy, its vanity, its latent capacity for evil. She answered the closing question with an inarticulate sound like a sob. It might have softened him, if he had not been deaf to everything but his own passion. "Don't suppose I flatter myself I'm the only victim. How about that young fool Ted Haviland?" She sprang to her feet. Fear, that had made her lie to Ted, made her tell the truth to Hardy. That fear was deep-rooted; it dated from the days when they were children and Vincent had the mastery in all their play. "Oh, Vincent, promise me, promise me, you won't do anything to Ted! It's all true about our engagement, but it was more my fault than his." "I can't believe that, Audrey. I'm very far from blaming him. I've no doubt you treated him as you did me." He sat down exhausted. Audrey, seeing the change of position, not the sudden collapse that prompted it, was in despair. "Won't you leave me alone now, Vincent? Haven't you said enough?" "Not yet. Let me think a bit." He leaned back and closed his eyes. He had so much to say, and now he had no words to say it with. Audrey looked at the clock; it was half-past four. Would he begin again? She almost wished he would; it would be better than this silence--better than that frowning forehead, with the terrible accusing thoughts behind it. Would no one come? Would he never go? Hardy had found words and was beginning to rouse himself, when in answer to her prayer the door was thrown open. Her deliverance had come in the shape of Langley Wyndham.